A STUDY OF DEATH 



BY ^ 

HENRY MILLS ALDEN 

AUTHOR OP 

"GOD IN HIS WORLD: AN INTERPRETATION" 




on 



^SEP g 4 J89g ^ 

3S ■ s 



NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

1895 



CoDvrieht. i8oc. bv Harper R r Rrothers. 

LC Control Number 




tmp96 027654 



TO MY BELOVED WIFE 



OBIIT MAI VIII., MDCCCXCV 



MY earliest written expression of intimate thought or 
cherished fancy was for your eyes only ; it was my first ap- 
proach to your maidenly heart, a mystical wooing, which 
neglected no resource, near or remote, for the enhancement 
of its charm, and so involved all other mystery in its own. 

In you childhood has been inviolate, never losing its power 
of leading me by an unspoken invocation to a green field, 
ever kept fresh by a living fountain, where the Shepherd 
tends his flock. Now, through a body racked with pain and 
sadly broken, still shines this unbroken childhood, teaching 
me Love's deepest mystery. 

It is fitting, then, that I should dedicate to you this book 
touching that mystery. It has been written in the shadow, 
but illumined by the brightness of an angel's face seen in 
the darkness, so that it has seemed easy and natural for me 
to find at the thorn's heart a secret and everlasting sweet- 
ness far surpassing that of the rose itself, which ceases in its 
own perfection. 

Wi .her that angel we have seen shall, for my need and 
contort and for your own longing, hold back his greatest 
gift, and leave you mine in the earthly ways we know and 
love, or shall hasten to make the heavenly surprise, the 
issue in either event will be a home-coming : if here, yet al- 
ready the deeper secret will have been in part disclosed ; and 
if beyond, that secret, fully known, will not betray the fond- 
est hope of loving hearts. Love never denied Death, and 
Death will not deny Love. 

H. M. A. 

May i, 1895. 



0> 



PREFACE 

Death and Evil, as considered in this work, are 
essentially one, and belong to Life not only in its 
manifestation but in its creative, or genetic, qual- 
ity. Life, in its principle, is not good or evil, 
mortal or immortal ; but as creative it becomes 
evil as well as good, and is immortal only as in- 
cluding mortality. This is also true of its crea- 
tive transformations, in that series which we call 
its development. It is also, from the beginning, 
redemption as it is creation. Redemption is crea- 
tive and creation is redemptive. The fountain is 
clear, and the stream clears itself. 

This is our proposition. It is not new. It was 
St. Paul's theme. Always it is the spiritual in- 
tuition as distinguished from the strictly ethical 
view of life. James Hinton, writing thirty -five 
years ago, insisted upon the positive and radical 
character of evil ; but he excluded sin from this 
view — a reservation which seems to us unneces- 
sary and which St. Paul did not make. The pres- 
ent work had been practically completed when 
the four volumes of Mr. Hinton's privately printed 
MSS. were placed in my hands. Of these vol- 



vi PREFACE 

urnes, comprising altogether about three thousand 
royal octavo pages, I have been able to examine 
only the first. I have found in this so many re- 
markable resemblances to positions which I have 
taken that, although the divergencies of view are 
equally remarkable, I feel under an obligation 
(such as would have no force in the case of a pub- 
lished workj to allude to the fact. Mr. Hinton 
lays more stress than I have done upon alterna- 
tivity in cosmic processes, more, however, with 
reference to polarisation and the vibratile charac- 
ter of all motion than to the meaning I have had 
in view in what I have designated as tropic re- 
action. My idea of the term " Limit " more near- 
ly corresponds to his use of it, though the applica- 
tion is not the same. He thoroughly understood 
the value of the paradox. Mr. Hinton's treatise 
is not devoted to any particular theme ; it is 
meant to represent the history of a mind in its 
workings toward an interpretation of universal 
life ; and so many of his propositions are of a 
tentative character, being subsequently modified 
and sometimes reversed, that only a critical sur- 
vey of the entire MSS. would yield the residuum 
of his thought. Xo one reading his writings can 
fail to be impressed by the originality and depth 
of his interpretation or to regret that his life was 
not spared long enough to enable him to organise 
his work into special theses upon the subjects 
treated. He wrote at a time when the Darwinian 



PREFACE vii 

hypothesis had been but recently broached, yet 
he anticipated much that has since been the re- 
sult of patient scientific research. His little vol- 
ume, entitled " The Mystery of Pain," by which 
alone he is known to the general reading public, 
taken in connection with his unpublished writ- 
ings, convinces me that no writer could have 
given to the world a work of such philosophic 
value as he might have prepared on the subject I 
have undertaken. After all, perhaps there has 
been no deeper insight shown or more subtle in- 
terpretation offered in this field than is to be 
found in Robert 'Browning's poetry. 

Recent science abounds in suggestions of which 
I have availed most freely. Science discloses re- 
demption in the realm of matter, and helps us 
to see death in birth and, in all development, the 
radical disturbance. The course of science itself 
is redemptive ; lost in its specialisations, its con- 
finement seeks release, and an angel appears in 
its prison. Even the reptile followed to the end 
of its course is seen to take to itself wings for 
ascension. The bee, closely observed, is seen to 
inject into each cell of honey some poison from 
his sting which makes the sweetness w T holesome 
— a venom inherent in the virtue. 

In my restatement of cosmic specialisation, fol- 
lowing the clues furnished by science, I have 
sought to emphasise the creative quality of Life 
in all its transformations and the homely sense of 



viii PREFACE 

things in a living universe : to see that Genesis is 
Kinship. 

In our reasoning, which must be imaginative, 
our path is through a series of analogues, which 
cease to be helpful and, indeed, mislead us if they 
are not themselves transformed in their trans- 
lation from one order of existence to another. 
Each successive order in the series of creative 
transformations is a version or flexion, shown, in 
due course of the general movement, as a rever- 
sion. Then we see that from the first the entire 
movement is reversion — the turning always a re- 
turning — so that the universe reflects Godward. 
We find that this reversion is conspicuously ap- 
parent in the organic kingdom. It is triumphant- 
ly manifest in the Christ-life. 

But Death and Evil are continued (whatever 
their transformation) into every new order — even 
into the kingdom of heaven, being therein lifted 
into their own heaven, where they are seen for 
what, in creation and redemption, they essentially 
are. 

Faith boldly occupies the field of pessimism, 
finding therein its largest hope. 

Henry Mills Alden. 



CONTENTS 

PROEM 

PAGE 

THE DOVE AND THE SERPENT 3 

FIRST BOOK 

chap. TWO VISIONS OF DEATH 

I. THE BODY OF DEATH 9 

II. THE MYSTICAL VISION . 13 

SECOND BOOK 
NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 27 

THIRD BOOK 

PRODIGAL SONS : A COSMIC PARABLE 

I. THE DIVIDED LIVING 65 

II. THE MORAL ORDER 133 

III. ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 183 

FOURTH BOOK 

DEATH UNMASQUED 

I. A SINGULAR REVELATION .225 

II. THE PAULINE INTERPRETATION 274 

III. CHRISTENDOM 2S6 

IV. ANOTHER WORLD 318 

INDEX . . e 329 



PROEM 
THE DOVE AND THE SERPENT 



PROEM 

THE DOVE AND THE SERPENT 

THE Dove flies, and the Serpent creeps. Yet is the 
Dove fond, while the Serpent is the emblem of 
wisdom. 

Both were in Eden : the cooing, fluttering, winged 
spirit, loving to descend, companion -like, brooding, 
following; and the creeping thing which had glided 
into the sunshine of Paradise from the cold bosoms of 
those nurses of an older world — Pain and Darkness 
and Death — himself forgetting these in the warmth and 
green life of the Garden. And our first parents knew 
nought of these as yet unutterable mysteries, any more 
than they knew that their roses bloomed over a tomb ; 
so that when all animate creatures came to Adam to 
be named, the meaning of this living allegory which 
passed before him was in great part hidden, and he 
saw no sharp line dividing the firmament below from 
the firmament above ; rather he leaned toward the 
ground, as one does in a garden, seeing how quickly 
it was fashioned into the climbing trees, into the clean 
flowers, and into his own shapely frame. It was upon 
the ground he lay when that deep sleep fell upon him 
from which he woke to find his mate, lithe as the ser- 
pent, yet with the fluttering heart of the dove. 



4 A STUDY OF DEATH 

As the Dove, though winged for flight, ever de- 
scended, so the Serpent, though unable to wholly leave 
the ground, tried ever to lift himself therefrom, as if to 
escape some ancient bond. The cool nights revived 
and nourished his memories of an older time, wherein 
lay his subtile wisdom, but day by day his aspiring 
crest grew brighter. The life of Eden became for him 
oblivion, the light of the sun obscuring and confound- 
ing his reminiscence, even as for Adam and Eve this 
life was Illusion, the visible disguising the invisible, 
and pleasure veiling pain. 

In Adam the culture of the ground maintained hu- 
mility. He was held, moreover, in lowly content by 
the charm of the woman, who was to him like the 
earth grown human ; and since she was the daughter 
of Sleep, her love seemed to him restful as the night. 
Her raven locks were like the mantle of darkness, and 
her voice had the laughter of streams that lapsed into 
unseen depths. 

But Eve had something of the Serpent's unrest, as if 
she too had come from the Underworld, which she 
would fain forget, seeking liberation, urged by desire as 
deep as the abyss she had left behind her and nour- 
ished from roots unfathomly hidden — the roots of the 
Tree of Life. She thus came to have conversation 
with the Serpent. 

In the lengthening days of Eden's one Summer these 
two were more and more completely enfolded in the 
Illusion of Light. It was under this spell that, dwell- 
ing upon the enticement of fruit good to look at and 
pleasant to the taste, the Serpent denied Death, and 
thought of Good as separate from Evil. " Ye shall not 



THE DOVE AND THE SERPENT 5 

surely die, but shall be as the gods, knowing good and 
evil." So far, in his aspiring day-dream, had the Ser- 
pent fared from his old familiar haunts — so far from 
his old-world wisdom ! 

A surer omen would have come to Eve had she 
listened to the plaintive notes of the bewildered Dove 
that in his downward flutterings had begun to divine 
what the Serpent had come to forget, and to confess 
what he had come to deny. 

For already was beginning to be felt "the season's 
difference," and the grave mystery, without which Para- 
dise itself could not have been, was about to be un- 
veiled, the background of the picture becoming its fore- 
ground. The fond hands plucking the rose had found 
the thorn. Evil was known as something by itself, 
apart from Good, and Eden was left behind, as one 
steps out of infancy. 

From that hour have the eyes of the children of men 
been turned from the accursed earth, looking into the 
blue above, straining their vision for a glimpse of white- 
robed angels. 

Yet it was the Serpent that w r as lifted up in the wil- 
derness ; and when he who " became sin for us " was 
being bruised in the heel by the old enemy, the Dove 
descended upon him at his baptism. He united the 
wisdom of the Serpent with the harmlessness of the 
Dove. Thus in him were bound together and recon- 
ciled the elements which in human thought had been 
put asunder. In him Evil is overcome of Good, as in 
him Death is swallowed up of Life ; and with his eyes 
we see that the robes of angels are white because they 
have been washed in blood. 



FIRST BOOK 
TWO VISIONS OF DEATH 



CHAPTER I 
THE BODY OF DEATH 

LIFE has gone. There is no next breath, no return 
of the pulse. No stillness is so blank and void of 
all suggestion. The sculptured marble, through the 
arrest of motion, becomes forever mobile ; but here 
the interruption is final, fixed in a frozen 

. . . Finality. 

calm. inere is here no poetic caesura, or 
pause between two strains of the same harmony. The 
way in which these feet have^ walked has come to a 
full stop ; of the motions and uses peculiar to this or- 
ganism as a means of human expression there is no 
continuance. 

This abrupt conclusion begets in us a dull astonish- 
ment, as if we were suddenly come against a blank 
wall, an unyielding, insurmountable barrier. The op- 
erations of Nature, the most obvious and the most im- 
pressive, being forever recurrent, cultivate in us the 
habit of expectation, so that we refuse to accept final- 
ity. Lulls there may be, dividing pauses, but no ab- 
solute conclusion. The thing which hath been is that 
which shall be, and having the same form and charac- 
ter. The same sun forever rises again, and whatever 
the change of conditions, this change is itself repeated 
in the uniform succession of seasons. The disappear- 
ance of the individual organism, after its brief cycle, 



io A STUDY OF DEATH 

we scarcely note, since through the succession of gen- 
erations we are surrounded by the same forms in all 
their variety ; it is taken to heart only when the ties 
of kinship or cherished companionship are broken. 
Then, the first shock having passed — the wonder that 
one so full of life has come into this blind silence — a 
great wave bears us backward : we remember, and every 
memory has its thorn of sharp regret : every thought 
of w T hat has been is pierced by the arrows of sorrow, 
as a cloud by lightnings, breaking into a storm of tears, 
because that which has been can never be again. 

Expectation is paralysed by this dull, unanswering 
silence. There is no response to our love or our grief ; 
no future for our waiting. We are in no presence ; it 
is the brutal fact of absence that stares us in the face. 

We may not say that the beloved sleeps, for where 
is this sleeper, who has so suddenly fled that it is left 
for us to close the eyes and compose the rigid limbs ? 
Instead of relaxation, as of one weary and brought to 
rest, there is extreme rigor, as of one entering upon 
some mighty travail. But this darkness veils not sleep 
nor the free play of dreams : and from it there is no 
waking either to work or to weep. 

This is the mere body of death, held out to us in its 

stark and glacial calm for a moment of tender care. 

which for it has no meaning — for our tribute of tears. 

to which it is insensible ; for the ritual of 

The Aiter-part - ef and faith [n whjch ; can h 

of a Mystery. & 

no part. It offers no illusion : every door 
is shut. It is a mute and surd in any human harmo- 
ny, a senseless contradiction, a brutal negation, an 



THE BODY OF DEATH n 

irrational conclusion. If it were even dormant, then 
might we await a transformation, like that of the chrys- 
alis, or like that which happened to this very organism 
when it emerged from its antenatal sleep. There is 
indeed to be a change, but not like that. Instead 
of a new synthesis, wherein, through a dormant larval 
mystery, an organism climbs into an upper chamber 
of the House of Life, freshly apparelled for a daintier 
bridal-feast — instead of this increment of beauty and 
wonder, we shall see dissolution, a sinking analytic mo- 
tion, whereby every complexion simulating the proper 
character and habit of a man shall be obliterated. In 
this dissolving view all psychical and even all physio- 
logical suggestions vanish, and are seen to be imperti- 
nent to such processes as belong exclusively to the in- 
organic kingdom. So alien to humanity is this change 
that it is offensive to human sensibility and noxious to 
human health ; and our most pressing concern, after 
mourning over our dead, is that we may bury it out of 
our sight. 

A primal instinct urges the animal into seclusion at 
the approach of death, and leads men to cover their 
faces or turn them to the wall, signifying that here 
beginneth a mystery not open to outward observation. 
From the beginning this was the soul's supreme con- 
fessional, wherein it repented itself of the world, for- 
saking all trodden ways, acknowledging their finality 
and its own utter weariness of them, and was shown 
the hidden thoroughfare leading to the Father's house. 

The mystery has passed before its mere after-part 
arrests our notice. There is in our staring eyes no 
more than in those of the dead any speculation that 



12 A STUDY OF DEATH 

will help us to its comprehension. The gravedigger's 
philosophy is as shallow and noisome as the work of 
his hands. All considerations based upon what we 
see, or think we see, of death are empty fallacies. 
Hamlet at Ophelia's grave is not more fantastic in 
considering " to what base uses we may return " than 
is Claudio when he shapes his fears : 

"Aye, but to die and go we know not where; 
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot ; 
This sensible warm motion to become 
A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
In thrilling regions of rock-ribbed ice ; 
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, 
And blown with restless violence round about 
The pendent world ; or to be worse than worst 
Of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts 
Imagine howling ! 'Tis too horrible !" 

To the physicist death is but the exact payment of 
man's debt to Nature, through the return of so much 
matter and so much force to that general fund of mat- 
ter and of force which, in the scientific view, remains in 
all permutations forever the same unchangeable quan- 
tity. But the scales of the chemist or his crucible 
touch not the real mystery any more nearly than does 
the gravedigger's spade. And for the most part those 
homilies wherewith we help out the funereal gloss that 
we have put upon death have the same open - eyed 
emptiness and fatuity. Only to the closed eyes is 
there the true vision. 



CHAPTER II 
THE MYSTICAL VISION 

The Angel of Death is the invisible Angel of Life. 
While the organism is alive as a human embodiment 
death is present, having the same human distinction 
as the life, from which it is inseparable, be- 
ing indeed the better half of living — its Th ^ een 
winged half, its rest and inspiration, its secret 
spring of elasticity and quickness. Life came upon 
the wings of Death, and so departs. 

If we think of life apart from death our thought is 
partial, as if we would give flight to the arrow without 
bending the bow. No living movement either begins 
or is completed save through death. If the shuttle 
return not there is no web ; and the texture of life is 
woven through this tropic movement. 

It is a commonly accepted scientific truth that the 
continuance of life in any living thing depends upon 
death. But there are two ways of expressing this 
truth : one, regarding merely the outward fact, as when 
we say that animal or vegetable tissue is renewed 
through decay ; the other, regarding the action and re- 
action proper to life itself, whereby it forever springs 
freshly from its source. The latter form of expression 
is mystical, in the true meaning of that term. We 
close our eyes to the outward appearance, in order 



14 A STUDY OF DEATH 

that we may directly confront a mystery which is al- 
ready past before there is any visible indication there- 
of. Though the imagination engaged in this mystical 
apprehension borrows its symbols or analogues from 
observation and experience, yet these symbols are 
spiritually regarded by looking at life on its living side 
and abstracted as far as possible from outward em- 
bodiment. We especially affect physiological ana- 
logues because, being derived from our experience, 
we may the more readily have the inward regard of 
them; and bypassing from one physiological analogue 
to another, and from all these to those furnished by 
the processes of nature outside of our bodies, we come 
to an apprehension of the action and reaction proper 
to life itself as an idea independent of all its physical 
representations. 

Thus we trace the rhythmic beating of the pulse to 
the systole and diastole of the heart, and we note a 
similar alternation in the contraction and relaxation 
of all our muscles. Breathing is alternately inspira- 
tion and expiration. Sensation itself is by beats, and 
falls into rhythm. There is no uninterrupted strain of 
either action or sensibility; a current or a contact is 
renewed, having been broken. In psychical operation 
there is the same alternate lapse and resurgence. 
Memory rises from the grave of oblivion. No holding 
can be maintained save through alternate release. 
Pulsation establishes circulation, and vital motions pro- 
ceed through cycles, each one of which, however mi- 
nute, has its tropic of Cancer and of Capricorn. Then 
there are the larger physiological cycles, like that 
wherein sleep is the alternation of waking. Passing 



THE MYSTICAL VISION 15 

from the field of our direct experience to that of obser- 
vation, we note similar alternations, as of day and night 
summer and winter, flood and ebb tide ; and science 
discloses them at every turn, especially in its recent 
consideration of the subtle forces of Nature, leading 
us back of all visible motions to the pulsations of the 
ether. 

Mechanism does not escape this trope and rhapsody, 
being indeed their most conspicuous illustration, since 
its fundamental principle is that of leverage, whereby 
there is libration or oscillation, as of a scale or a pen- 
dulum, or circular motion as of a wheel. In celestial 
mechanism the material fulcrum disappears, and there 
is the invisible centre of motion, of flight and return, 
through tendencies which seem to balance each other, 
giving the motion the orbital form. 

In the nebular hypothesis Science has presented us 
a view of the development of the universe from a neb- 
ulous expanse, to which, in its final dissolution, it must 
return. This immense pulsation is the grand cycle, 
the tropics of which evade all human calculation. 

Now all these analogues or phenomenal representa- 
tions of tropic movement lead us to the apprehension 
of the trope as proper to life itself ; they are the for- 
mal imaginations of an imageless truth. The trope it- 
self vanishes into its invisible ground, and we have no 
definite expression of it save in its manifestation. 

The insistence, however, upon a mystical appre- 
hension is not foreign to science, which demands for 
its own completeness an invisible world. To account 
for the communication of energy through cosmic space, 
the physicist postulates as a medium the invisible 



16 A STUDY OF DEATH 

ether, the vortical motions of which have displaced 
what were formerly known as the ultimate atoms. It 
is but a step from the ethereal vibration to the pul- 
sation of the Eternal Life. We say pulsation, still 
clinging to an image, to the visible skirts of our ex- 
pression of what is in itself ineffable, even as the 
Prophet was placed in the cleft of a rock and so 
had the vision of a God who had passed by, whose 
face no man can see. We behold that movement of 
pulsing life which is manifest, which is in time and 
which measures time ; the alternate movement, out- 
wardly apparent to us in dissolution only, is a vanishing 
from our view into a field whither we may not follow 
with the terms pertinent to existence in space and 
time — the field of a measureless eternal life. We are 
at a loss for predicates, and resort to negations. But 
that concerning which our negation is — that is Being 
itself, the ground of existence and of persistence, of 
appearance and of reappearance. 

In considering the action and reaction proper to life 
itself, we here dismiss from view all measured cycles, 
whose beginning and end are appreciably separate ; 
our regard is confined to living moments, so fleet that 
their beginning and ending meet as in one point, which 
is seen to be at once the point of departure and of 
return. Thus we may speak of a man's life as includ- 
ed between his birth and his death, and, with reference 
to this physiological term, think of him as living and 
then as dead ; but we may also consider him while liv- 
ing as yet every moment dying, and in this view death 
is clearly seen to be the inseparable companion of life, 
the way of return and so of continuance. This pulsa- 



THE MYSTICAL VISION 17 

tion, forever a vanishing and a resurgence, so incal- 
culably swift as to escape observation, is proper to life 
as life, does not begin with what we call birth nor end 
with what we call death (considering birth and death 
as terms applicable to an individual existence) ; it is 
forever beginning and forever ending. Thus to all 
manifest existence we apply the term Nature (iiaturd), 
which means forever being born; and on its vanishing 
side it is moritura, or forever dying. Resurrection is 
thus a natural and perpetual miracle. The idea of life 
as transcending any individual embodiment is as ger- 
mane to science as it is to faith. 

Death, thus seen as essential, is lifted above its 
temporary and visible accidents. It is no longer asso- 
ciated with corruption, but rafher with the sweet and 
wholesome freshness of life, being the way of 

Absolution. 

its renewal. Sweeter than the honey which 
Samson found in the lion's carcass is this everlasting 
sweetness of Death ; and it is a mystery deeper than 
the strong man's riddle. 

So is Death pure and clean, as is the dew that comes 
with the cool night when the sun has set ; clean and 
white as the snow-flakes that betoken the absolution 
which Winter gives, shriving the earth of all her Sum- 
mer wantonness and excess, when only the trees that 
yield balsam and aromatic fragrance remain green, 
breaking the box of precious ointment for burial. 

In this view also is restored the kinship of Death 
with Sleep. 

The state of the infant seems to be one of chronic 



i8 A STUDY OF DEATH 

mysticism, since during the greater part of its days its 
eyes are closed to the outer world. Its 
S1 D^th nd lar o er familiarity is still with the invisible, 
and it almost seems as if the Mothers of 
Darkness were still withholding it as their nursling, 
accomplishing for it some mighty work in their proper 
realm, some such fiery baptism of infants as is frequent- 
ly instanced in Greek mythology, tempering them for 
earthly trials. The infant must needs sleep while this 
work is being done for it : it has been sleeping since the 
work began, from the foundation of the world, and the 
old habit still clings about it and is not easily laid aside. 
In that new field now open to the nascent organism 
— a field of conscious effort directed toward outward 
ends — there is exhaustion and expenditure. There 
must also be a special restoration, and this is given in 
the regular and measured sleep of the adolescent and 
adult organism, corresponding to its measured energy. 
This later sleep differs from that of the infant in that 
it is the relief from weariness, the winning back of a 
spent force. In the main — that is, in all unconscious 
activities — the burden is still borne by an unseen power, 
but there is also a burden and strain felt by the indi- 
vidual as in some way his own, appreciable in his con- 
sciousness and subject to his arbitrary determination — 
a burden which he may voluntarily increase or di- 
minish. The loosening of the strain he does not thus 
feel to be of his own ordering. Sleep comes to him as 
does the night whereto it seems to belong. He may 
resist it, but it will come, overtaking even the sentinel 
at his post : or, again, he may court it with all dili- 
gence and it shall fly away. 



THE MYSTICAL VISION 19 

That which we have been considering as the death 
that is in every moment is a reaction proper to life it- 
self, waking or sleeping, whereby it is renewed, sharing 
at once Time and Eternity — time as outward form and 
eternity as its essential quality. Sleep is a special re- 
laxation, relieving a special strain. As daily we build 
with effort and design an elaborate superstructure 
above the living foundation, so must this edifice nightly 
be laid in ruins. Sleep is thus a disembarrassment, 
the unloading of a burden wherewith we have weighted 
ourselves. Here again we are brought into a kind of 
repentance and receive absolution. Sleep is forgive- 
ness. 

In some deeper sense sleep is one with death, and is 
proper and essential to life itself. Life forever sleeps 
beneath the masque of wakefulness, as it forever dies 
beneath the masque of phenomenal existence. The 
more of life, the more of death and the more of sleep. 
Wakefulness is but partial, and is associated more 
especially with age than with youth. Sleep, also, as 
we know it, is partial, not the inmost withdrawal to its 
chamber of eternal rest. For the recovery of man's 
strength life gives him this partial release. A saving 
hand is stretched forth out of the darkness, snatching 
him from the world and locking his energies in sus- 
pense. The world of conscious experience is cut off 
by a temporarily impassable chasm, as if for the sleeper 
it had no existence ; and yet it is only the desire for 
that world which is being renewed in this darkness. 

That which we commonly call the dream, whose stuff 
is borrowed from the daylight, occurs only on the out- 
skirts of the domain of sleep. It has been fancied 



20 A STUDY OF DEATH 

that in a deeper dream, never registered in conscious 
memory, there may be a return to the associations of 
former lives, but this deeper dream — if such a dream 
may be — imageless and having no outward moorings, 
must also be inhospitable to reminiscences of any pre- 
vious individual existence. Though there is a suspen- 
sion of individual activity, there is still the confinement 
of individuality itself, whose integrity is never disturbed 
in any normal condition of life. In hypnotism and in- 
sanity there may be a schism or refraction of the indi- 
vidual self, and even, it may be, the resumption of an 
ancient habit and familiarity — an atavistic reversion — 
but not in sleep. Hypnotism seems to be a kind of 
necromancy, whereby the hidden depths of conscious- 
ness are brought to the surface at the bidding of out- 
ward suggestion. But in normal sleep, whatever re- 
sponse there may be to outward suggestion, there is no 
displacement of " the abysmal deeps of personality." 

Sleep, in this special sense, is, indeed, akin to Death. 
But he stands this side of the veil, only simulating the 
offices of his invisible brother, who stands at the very 
font of Life, the hierophant of the Greater Mysteries — 
those of the eternal life. Death calls with the voice of 
Life, calls from the central source to the remotest cir- 
cumference of the universal life, calls with every pulsa- 
tion of that life, and is, indeed, if we may use such an 
image, the return beat of the pulse of the All-Father's 
heart, the attraction of all being to its centre of rest in 
that Father's bosom, whatever may be its separate 
movements in the cycles of Time and Space. Sleep is 
the hierophant of a Minor Mystery, folding us in his 
mantle of darkness, renewing the world's desire, recov- 



THE MYSTICAL VISION 21 

ering Time. Death from within the veil instantaneously 
and every instant transforms life from its very source, 
recovering Eternity. Sleep is re-creation. Death is 
the mighty Negation, whereby all worlds vanish into 
that Nothing from which all worlds are made, the vast 
inbreathing of the Spirit of God for His ever-repeated 
fiat of Creation. Sleep suspends the individuality 
within its embodiment. Death shows the inmost per- 
sonality in a divine presence — that angel of each one 
of us which forever beholds the face of the Father. 

* 

Our usual regard of death is one which brings into 
the foreground its accidental aspects, not pertinent to 
its essential reality. Even our grief for dear ones taken 
from us dwells upon our loss, upon the difference to us 
which death has made, and so our attention is diverted 
from the transcendent office. On the hither side Death 
has no true interpreter, and none returns from its true 
domain to be the witness of its invisible glory, none 
save the risen Lord. But though the loved 

Ascendent 

ones gone cannot return to us, we shall go Ministration 

fe . fe of Death. 

to them ; and this faith which follows that 
which has vanished, the Christian hope of resurrection, 
lifts us to a point of vision from which it is possible 
for us to see death for what it really is as invisibly an 
ascending ministrant, whatever frailty and decrepitude 
may attend the visible descent. 

The pagan idea of immortality insisted upon death- 
lessness. The Christian faith in resurrection gives 
death back to life as essential to its transformation. 
Death is swallowed up of Life — included therein. As 



22 A STUDY OF DEATH 

" Children of the Resurrection," we have no part in 
what is commonly called death — that visible declen- 
sion and dissolution from which our life is withdrawn, 
together with our true death, leaving the grave no 
victory. 

We have only to allow ourselves the liberty which 

science takes, to arrive at this view as a philosophical 

conviction. We have, indeed, in juvenes- 

AnaicTue 1 cence a visible illustration of an ascent of 
life upon the hidden wings of death. If 
man were distinguished from all other organisms by 
the possession of perpetual youth, we who are accus- 
tomed to associate death only with decline might pro- 
nounce him deathless, limiting the province of mor- 
tality to those organisms whose descent maintains his 
levitation. Gravitation, which is the physical symbol 
of death, was before Newton not suspected as a cosmic 
principle. Things were seen to fall upon the earth, 
but the earth was not seen to fall toward the sun; 
there was, indeed, no appreciable evidence of such a 
tendency. Yet, wholly apart from such visible signs 
thereof, Newton's mystical imagination leaped to the 
truth (afterward reasonably confirmed) that all bodies 
are falling bodies ; and in his expression of this truth 
he made gravitation something more than is indicated 
in the outward aspects of falling and weight — he called 
it an attraction, so that his thought became the mys- 
tical apprehension of an unseen but universal cosmic 
bond. Thus though man had never shown any visible 
signs of decline, some Newton would have arisen in 
the physiological field and asserted his mortality, see- 



THE MYSTICAL VISION 23 

ing that in youth death is swallowed up of life, as grav- 
itation is in the ascent of every organism and in the 
sustained distance from the sun of every planet. 

Every organism has an action and reaction quite dis- 
tinct from those of inorganic substances, and which 
vanish from our view before there is left behind merely 
"the dust that riseth up and is lightly laid again." In 
the complex human life there is much more that van- 
ishes — the passing of a spiritual as well as a physiolog- 
ical mystery, far withdrawn from outward observation 
before the sceptical physicist or pessimist seizes upon 
the mere residuum or precipitate as the object of his 
fruitless investigation — fruitless, at least, as having any 
pertinence to human destiny. The body which Death 
leaves behind is surrendered to that inorganic chemis- 
try which was formerly in alliance with the more subtle 
actions and reactions of a distinctively human life, and 
to the physical bond of gravitation which was once the 
condition of its consistency but which now brings it to 
the dust. Are we any more mystical than Newton and 
Laplace in our conviction that Death as a part of the 
higher life is its unseen bond — the way of return to its 
source ? 

In the cycle of every living organism there is a de- 
scending as well as an ascending movement — age as 
well as youth, so that the forces to which 
the outward structure is finally abandoned T ^RuTn ° f 
seem to have upon it a lien anticipating 
their full possession. This is simply saying that the 
life and death proper to the organism are gradually 
withdrawing before they together wholly vanish, leav- 



24 A STUDY OF DEATH 

ing the field to lower life and death. But there is no 
claim of the lower upon the higher, save through the 
surrender made by the higher as a part of its proper 
destiny. The signal of retreat is not given from with- 
out but from the inmost chamber of the citadel, where 
reside the will and intelligence which determined the 
distinctive architecture of the marvellous superstruct- 
ure, and which hold also the secret of its ruin. That 
secret is itself genetic : invisibly it looks toward palin- 
genesis — toward the higher transformation of the van- 
ishing life, and visibly toward the outward succession 
of a new generation. 

So Death is Janus-faced : toward an unseen resur- 
rection, a reascendent ministration, and toward the 
visible resurgence of new life upon the earth, to which 
it ministers by descent and which, in the case of the 
highest organisms, it sustains by prodigal expenditure, 
during a period of helpless infancy and dependent ado- 
lescence. 

Nor is Death to be denied aught of the grace and 
beauty of this descent and costly sacrifice, aught of 
the sweetness of expiration — the incense of its con- 
suming flame, since these truly belong to our mysti- 
cal thanatopsis. We close our eyes only to the weak- 
ness and decrepitude, to the rust and ashes, to the 
mere outward accidents that disguise the might and 
kindliness of Death. 

The mystery of Evil is bound up with that of death, 
and the considerations already advanced respecting 



THE MYSTICAL VISION 25 

the one are alike applicable to the other. The mere 
body of Evil, like that of Death, is the after-part of a 
mystery far withdrawn from outward obser- 
vation into the unseen depths of creative 1 ^f Evn^^ 
purpose, as the secret of winter is hidden, 
beneath its white frosts and behind its dun skies, at 
the very roots of things in the earth and in the heav- 
ens, and is not disclosed in the falling leaves or in the 
cold blast that sweeps through the naked forest. In 
our mystical vision Evil is seen to be essential to life 
— to its tropical movement of flight and return, hidden 
in its nascence and aspiration, and in its descent in- 
wardly beautiful and gracious, looking toward renas- 
cence ; being in reality one with Death in its intimate 
association with the glory that is unseen, and with 
the pathos of all earthly experience, whatever may be 
its outward disguises and contradictions. 

Even Sin, which is the sting of Death, must have its 
reconcilement with eternal life. We turn from the 
raggedness, the vileness, and the emaciation of the 
Prodigal, and regard only the unseen bond which 
brings him home, while we hear a voice saying : This my 
son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found. 

Here, too, we but follow the mystical imagination of 
science, seeing in the spiritual world an attraction as 
mighty and as effective as that of gravitation in the 
physical ; and, like Newton, we turn from the acci- 
dental appearance of falling to the unseen reality — the 
mystical drawing to the heavenly centre ; we turn from 
the weight that seems a burden to that which in the 
new interpretation becomes " an eternal weight of 
glory." 



SECOND BOOK 
NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 



WHAT was the earliest thought of Death ? The 
most primitive religious cult of which we have 
any record was the worship of ancestors. This car- 
ries us back to a time when in human thought there 
was no distinction between humanity and divinity. 
Man was a god in disguise, wearing the masque of 
Time, and Death was the unmasquing of 

, . -,. . • t^ • i „i .1 • • • Native Im- 

his divinity. Evidently this ancient imag- presskm of 
ination was in no wise misled by the dimin- Death - 
uendo of a descending movement that seemed to end 
in utter weakness ; the vanishing point divided appar- 
ent impotence from an infinitude of power. To pass 
wholly into the unseen was to re - enter the latent 
ground of that potency of which the visible world was 
the manifestation in a continuous creation ; and, in 
this restoration of higher power, there w T as no oblitera- 
tion of personality but rather an enhancement of it, so 
that the pulsations of the universe seemed to be from 
stronger hearts than beat upon the earth. 
The mighty resurgence of life in dawns and ^j^tief 
spring-times was especially and most inti- than the 

Living. 

mately associated with the dead — it was 
their Easter. Thus it happened that trees and in- 
deed all plant life came to be thought of as mystically 
expressing the newness and elastic upspringing of life 



30 A STUDY OF DEATH 

that had been buried out of sight, buried like the seed 
which dissolves for germination, sown in weakness 
and raised in strength, sown in corruption and raised 
in incorruption. The golden myrtle bough which Virgil 
makes iEneas pluck before he can descend to Hades is 
a survival of the old association, and primitive folk- 
lore abounds in similar instances. 

The serpent, because of its complete exuviation and 
brilliant juvenescence every spring-time, was a charac- 
teristic symbol of underworld divinities, who presided 
not only over the nascence of all things but over all 
increase and fruitful ness. Even in the later mythol- 
ogy Pluto was the god of wealth. 

The reader will immediately connect all this with 
what has already been presented as the mystical vision 
of Death, and see how accordant with that view was 
man's earliest impression. 

The modern habit, into whose texture enter so many 
and so varied strains of sentiment, thought, and lan- 
guage, is closely wrapped about us, and is quickly 
adopted by each new generation, so that we have quite 
lost the native sense of things ; and even so much of 
it as lingered about our infancy is irrecoverable by 
us save in the faintest reminiscences. The scarcely 
awakened sensibility of the child of to-day is forth- 
with clad in raiment ready-made and thrust upon it, 
and confronts elaborate artificial structures that con- 
fine it in many ways, while in others it is stimulated 
by suggestions forcing it into the vast perspective of 
intellectual and aesthetic symbolism. In rare instances 
is the child saved from this too hasty investiture by 
fortunate neglect or the still more happy circumstance 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 31 

of solitude in the presence of Nature, and so enters into 
the kingdom of the naive ; and in all cases he has some 
protection through the long, slow waves of feeling that 
resist invasion and fraction. But generally these mu- 
niments of childhood's native realm are soon broken 
down, and such impressions as are won in their naked 
purity are rapidly dissipated. 

It is difficult for us to abolish our perspective, and 
such impressionism as we have in recent art and liter- 
ature is so remote from native sensibility that it be- 
longs rather to the end than to the beginning of things, 
to the fin de siecle than to a primitive age. 

Poe and Maeterlinck are far removed from Homer, 
who himself belongs to a period representing the youth 
of the world, not its infancy. The impression of death 
in Poe's poem The Raven, while -it is more subtle than 
that given in Maeterlinck's E Intrnse, is not naive — it 
is the reflex of experience. The native intimation is 
more truly conveyed in De Quincey's infantile associ- 
ation of his little sister's death with the crocuses than 
in " the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of the purple 
curtain " and all the other shuddering sensations in- 
spired by Poe's bird of ill-omen. The refrain of The 
Raven is " Nevermore." But to the native sensibility 
Death is not an alien or an intruder ; nor are the Pow- 
ers of Darkness unfriendly, being the true Eumenides, 
promising always bright returns. That which is taken 
from the light is hidden in the quickening matrix. The 
last gift of vanishing life is a seed, suggesting at once 
burial and germination. Thus the many-seeded pome- 
granate was the pledge between Persephone and Plu- 
to. A sculptured slab recently excavated in Attica 



32 A STUDY OF DEATH 

shows the Eumenides in their most archaic representa- 
tion, before they were transformed into Furies. They 
are figured as benignant goddesses, each holding in 
one hand a serpent and in the other a pomegranate, 
and before them stand a young husband and wife, ex- 
pecting a blessing. 

The later pagan mythology was as wide a divergence 
from primitive impressions as is dogmatic theology 
from early Christian feeling. The rude infancy of 
humanity left of itself no record, and there is little to 
reward our most diligent quest of the naive. The 
savage races of to-day are degenerate, and their in- 
veterate simplicity more completely veils the native 
sense than does the complex environment of more as- 
piring peoples ; even their myths, handed down by 
tradition, lack the naivete of the Indo-European. The 
retention of the native in indigenous races, in those 
secluded from contact with others, and in those whose 
development has been arrested, holds only the desic- 
cated semblance, like an embalmed mummy; and the 
return of the native in degenerate races is no true res- 
toration, belying and contradicting its original, being 
indeed the more fallacious because of a fancied re- 
semblance. The wildness of an old garden, once cul- 
tivated but now come to decay, bears no true likeness 
to the wildness of native flowers. 

The archaeological researches of this century have 
given us some glimpses of a quasi-primitive humanity, 
mere fugitive hints which, after all, are not more sig- 
nificant than those furnished by old Hebrew scripture 
in certain passages caught and held there from some 
otherwise long-forgotten past. 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 33 



II 

The childhood of a race has this in common with 
the infancy of an individual — that its larger familiarity 
is with the invisible ; it is naturally mysti- 
cal. The primitive man has not that facile Mysticism. 
handling of things which takes away their 
wonder, nor that ease of thought and speech which 
provides for him a fund of loose words and notions 
which he can toss to and fro daringly and at random. 
A look, a spoken word, an. idea, a dream, is fatally real 
to him, for good or for evil ; and he invests everything 
about him with an ominous significance. Tokens have 
not become common coin. His industry is concerned 
with living things, with flocks and herds. In his com- 
merce values are real, not merely representative. To 
him Nature lives in every fibre of her being, nothing 
is motionless or insensate ; it is a flowing world. No 
masterful meddling or violence on his part disturbs 
this impression. The growing tree is not to him some- 
thing to be thought of simply for his use ; the forests 
are as free from his invasion as the clouds above them, 
and the streams pursue their course without diversion 
or disturbance. There is nothing to break the living 
veil of illusion — a shimmering veil of lights and shad- 
ows, of comings and goings, pulsing with the beating 
heart of the Great Mother, whose changeful garment 
forever hides and forever discloses the charm of her 
wondrous beauty. In the free play of this sincere life, 
where his naivete answ r ered to the perennial freshness 
of the world, there was no room for the unreal play. 
3 



34 A STUDY OF DEATH 

No sharply defined perspective furnished the ground 
for distinction between small and great, high or low. 
There could be no idolatry in the Magnificat of a wor- 
ship that exalted the meanest creature. The sublime 
superstition which lifted the lowest phenomenon to the 
highest plane had nothing in common with what we 
call superstition, whose omens are fortuitous and triv- 
ial, and whose signs have lost their significance. To- 
temism (as we understand it), fetichism, witchcraft, and 
sorcery are perfunctory relics of what was once a living 
correspondence. We juggle with the dry twigs of what 
was then the green tree of life. All that we imagine 
as possible in clairvoyance was more than realised in 
the primitive sensibility, not as yet disturbed and con- 
fused by those facile mental processes which loosen 
the bond of the eternal familiarity. 

When appropriation was limited to living uses, the 
possession of things was not tenacious enough to im- 
prison the soul in an artificial environment : and thus 
inward meanings were conserved in their newness. In 
this regard of the world the new was still the old, the 
surprise deepening the sense of familiarity. Time itself, 
in the childhood of the world, is the reflex of eternity. 

When only living uses were regarded, the seizure of 
man upon his earthly kingdom was eager, swift, and 
passionate, but the reaction was quick; that which 
was grasped was readily released. It is only against 
the deep backward abyss t that desire is a longing, 
looking forward to untrodden ways, to a tale not yet 
told, and yet falling back into the darkness as upon 
the infinite source of its strength, with unfaltering faith 
in resurgence. 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 35 



III 

It is peculiar, therefore, to primitive man that the 
backward look seems dominant, even in eager forward 
movement. Tenses are confused, as in the Hebrew 
the past is the prophetic tense, and as in 
our Anglo-Saxon the term was is the inten- Backward and 
sive form of the present, meaning still is, Downward 
and so is caught passing into the future. 
That of the stream which has passed is that which has 
gone forward. In this primitive paradox and confu- 
sion (which is, indeed, characteristic of all real think- 
ing) we have the feeling of a flowing world, whose 
end is its beginning, as the ultimate of a plant is its 
seed. The prominence given to memory and tradition 
in the early education of a race is not for the sake of 
stability, but is rather the regard of a growing tree to 
its roots, whither its juices perennially return ; it is 
fidelity to the ground of quick transformation. This 
backward look is evident in the phrase used in patri- 
archal times, saying of a man when he died that he 
was " gathered unto his fathers." Therefore it is that 
among primitive peoples we find no allusion to a future 
state. The idea of recession, of return, dominated 
the native impression of all tropical movement. The 
blood was the life, and, wherever shed, it returned to 
its source, as the waters returned to their springs. 
This tidal stream or life current of humanity (limited 
in the primitive conception to the family, or the gens) 
found its way back to the well of its issue. /Thus kin- 
ship was the first of all sacraments, the fountain of all 



36 A STUDY OF DEATH 

obligation, so that all sin was a kind of blood-guilti- 
ness. 

To this natural piety was joined a natural humility. 
The tree of life, while it grows upward and its unfold- 
ing leaves rejoice in the light, never loses its fidelity to 
the darkness nor the habit of its descending juices. 
The intimate association of man with the earth was 
the largest reality in primitive faith, Semitic or Aryan. 
The earth was the mother of all living, and the earliest 
idea of divine as of human kinship was one deriving it 
from motherhood rather than from fatherhood. Solar 
and astral worship belonged to a somewhat later de- 
velopment, when human thought entered upon a larger 
range, taking the stars into its counsels, as is indicated 
in the term consideration. Desire, in its earliest direc- 
tion, was earthward, away from the stars — desiderium. 
The sun first entered into the sacred drama through 
his association with the earth, through a divine hus- 
bandry corresponding to the human ; and in the dark- 
ness this association was continued through his par- 
ticipation with the Great Mother (Isis, Rhea, Cybele, 
Ishtar, Demeter, or by whatever name she was known) 
in the dominion of the underworld. The sun-god was 
ever a ministrant hero, like Heracles undergoing mighty 
labors, and finally overborne by death, becoming a 
theme for such passionate lament as wailed over autumn 
fields in the song of Linus or the requiem of Adonis. 
But in the Demetrian worship of primitive Attica 
even this pathos was associated with Persephone, the 
daughter of the Great Mother — so much nearer to the 
heart of man, in these earliest mysteries, was the earth, 
so much more impressive the sorrow of maternity ! 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 37 

From the Powers of Darkness and not from those of 
Light was friendly aid solicited in the earliest human 
worship. The Titans were brought into alliance with 
man before he lifted his eyes in prayer to Apollo. 
Divinity had its home in the earth, and its haunts in 
the springs which quicken the ground. Death opened 
not the gates of heaven ; arid even at a later period, 
when God was exalted, as the Most High, into the 
heaven of heavens, the translation of mortals to His 
presence was exceptional. Paradise, like Sheol, was 
beneath the waters, and it was possible to look from 
one into the other. In the most primitive period all 
men alike passed to Sheol at death, the idea of Para- 
dise, like that of Elysium, being a later conception, 
when penalties and rewards, as the result of a divine 
judgment, came to be associated, with a future state. 
Indeed, as we have seen, the domain to which death 
introduced the soul was thought of as past rather than 
future — the estate of the fathers. 

It is not easy for us to even ideally reproduce a pe- 
riod when men lived in a primary field so directly vital 
that their uprightness seemed to them like that of a 
tree, a living righteousness, having no consequence 
save in its fruit, the ultimate of which is expressed in 
its seed ; when they looked upward by feeling down- 
ward, and forward by feeling backward ; when not only 
the springs of life were divine, but its whole procedure 
so entirely of divine ordinance that to think of it as a 
probation or an experiment would have seemed blas- 
phemous. The sense of a real Presence, holding them 
by an inevitable bond, forbade conceptions quite ger- 
mane to modern experience, when men think of them- 



38 A STUDY OF DEATH 

selves as the arbiters of their destiny. In the primi- 
tive thought good and evil, blessing and damnation, 
belonged to life, as such, from its beginning, even as 
light and darkness, pleasure and pain. To the native 
impression fear is as natural as hope, sensibility itself 
having its beginning in tremor and irritation. 

This view of primitive man is quite as mystical as 
was the primitive man's view of life, and is largely the 
product of our imagination. We can only ideally re- 
produce absolute realism, and the men who had most 
absolutely the historic sense are themselves prehis- 
toric. The native man is as much a mystery to us as 
a man born again seemed to Nicodemus. He is not 
the man we know, and the attributes we have been 
ascribing to him belong rather to dormant humanity 
than to a progressive order. What amazing stupefac- 
tion of abysmal slumber must have still held in sus- 
pense all the proper activities of manhood in a being 
who looked down to his God ; who confounded the 
divine life with that of every living thing, looking in- 
deed upon the lower animals, and even upon trees 
and stones, as somewhat nearer divinity than was him- 
self ; as if he must reverse the stages of his own ante- 
natal evolution, in order that through the mediate se- 
ries he might find the way to Him who was the Most 
Low ! 

IV 

The earliest spiritual lore was from the education of 
sleep — of this very sleep which in the typical primitive 
era withheld man himself, as in every new generation 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 39 

it withholds the infant, from merely outward meanings 
and uses, and within the realm of a divine 
mystery. What man w r as to be in his mas- ti<mofs\ee~ 
tery of the world was a destiny hidden from 
himself — a destiny dominating him even while his an- 
cient nurse and mother clung to him and often drew 
him from the light which dazed his eyes back into her 
helpful darkness. Indeed, it was from her bosom that 
his strength was nourished for flight ; she was at once 
Lethe and Levana, giving him sleep and also lifting him 
into the light. The lusty outward venture would have 
seemed too perilous but for her helping hand, and the 
visible world alien and fearsome but for her whispered 
names of new shapes, linking them with an older wis- 
dom. His infancy was thus the period of divination. 
Naturally, therefore, he thought of death as divinisa- 
tion — not as an exaltation through some starward 
movement, as the apotheosis of a Caesar seemed to 
the Roman, but as the restoration of latent powers 
through descent and by way of darkness. 

We who know only the Hades of later mythology, 
peopled by bloodless shades, weak wanderers shiver- 
ing between two worlds, being neither wholly alive nor 
wholly dead, but held in the vain suspense of an empty 
dream, forget that, in the earliest thought of men, the 
dead were mightier than the living. The worship of 
ancestors was the offspring of this impression. Men 
covenanted with the dead as with the gods, and be- 
lieved that they thus availed of the larger potency 
and wisdom of the departed. The sword of an ances- 
tor in the hand of his descendant had an access of this 
superior energy. 



40 A STUDY OF DEATH 

In this time, when man especially leaned to the dark- 
ness, he found the way to unseen springs of power, an- 
cestral and divine — a direct and sure way, familiar then 
but afterward forgotten or obscured. The spells of 
sorcery and necromancy were the perversion of this 
living ritual by which man once courted and won the 
Invisible. 

All rituals grew out of this primitive ritual, known as 
the Way, but, losing the living reality, degenerated into 
meaningless routine. The profound meaning attached 
to the Way in all Oriental religions represents inade- 
quately the original meaning. The plant knows the 
way to the water-springs. The habit of animal instinct, 
repeated from generation to generation, implies the 
divining of its way of correspondence. The ancient 
gathering of " simples " w T as the following of a path as 
sure and as mystically familiar as that which led to 
the means of nourishment. This Way began with the 
beginning of an organism, of an embodiment whereby 
the desire of the spirit became the desire of the flesh. 
The hunger which shaped the mouth informed it with 
a selective wisdom, whereby it found its response in a 
world it had always known, being outwardly stimulated 
and helped by a world which had always known it. 
The familiarity whereby Desire finds its Way in the 
visible world, blindly recognising, courting, and winning 
its respondents, which on their part are also seeking 
and finding it with the same blind insistence, is nour- 
ished in the darkness that is the background of all ex- 
istence in time and in the world. Thus the Eternal 
Bridegroom is met, in all His myriad disguises, in the 
realm of His beautiful illusions ; but in death, when 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 41 

one turns back into the darkness, all disguises are laid 
aside and He is seen face to face. And, as consub- 
stantiality is the ground of correspondence in the visi- 
ble world, Death is an awaking into His likeness. 

Such was the native impression of Death. The eva- 
nition from the light into the darkness, recovering 
eternity, could not be for the primitive man the occa- 
sion of doubt or solicitude ; it was the ground of faith, 
through a covenant older than time. 

Whenever any remarkable revelation was to be made 
to man he was brought into " a deep sleep." The 
ordinary occultation of the world in night and sleep be- 
came for him the supreme season — suprema tempest as 
diet, as it was phrased in the old Latin sacred books. 
Sleep was the undoing of all in man that grew in the 
daylight, and a committal of him to invisible powers 
which wrought in him their work, and from which there 
was an influx of divine wisdom : 

I11 a dream, in a Vision of the Night \ 

WJien deep sleep falleth upon men, 
In slumberings upon the bed ; 

Then he openeth the ears of men 
And sealeth their instruction, 

That he may withdraw man from his purpose, 
And hide pnde from man. 

In this occultation the sense of reality was enlarged 
rather than diminished, raised to a higher power, and a 
new world was created in a truer vision. The human 
was so intimately blended with the divine that the dis- 
tinction between them was blurred, even as in death 
this distinction was completely lost. Accordingly the 
intimations of the dream were accepted as divine. 



42 A STUDY OF DEATH 

Wholly apart from the mystery of sleep and from the 
divine intimations of the dream, there was for man in 
this occultation the beginning of a spiritual philosophy. 
Sleep not only gave man a standing in a nearer divine 
presence, but the fact that life and thought went on 
when the body was motionless developed a conscious- 
ness of the human soul as independent of the visible 
world, and even of all that he ordinarily called himself. 
There was movement which was not locomotion, and a 
free play of mental activity involving an indefinite ex- 
pansion of time. If there had been no night, a vague 
and fragmentary spiritual consciousness might have 
arisen from shadows and echoes. But in sleep the ab- 
straction was complete, spontaneous, and inexplicable, 
and there was added to the independent existence of 
images their independent motion ; there was a moving 
drama, wherein the self could become others, still re- 
maining itself, being at the same time actor and spec- 
tator. There was vision with closed eyes, and hearing 
as with an inward ear ; while the immobility of the 
bodily members seemed to be not merely the veil be- 
tween two worlds, but the very condition of free psy- 
chical activity. 



When the habit of abstraction, thus begun, became 

facile, the dream began to lose its importance as an 

especially real psychical operation : and its 

The Awaking. ,/\ . J . , , .,' 

divine intimacy was loosened, until at length 
the easily shifting notion displaced the intense reality. 
A corresponding change affected the entire human re- 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 43 

gard of the world. Outward ends began to obscure 
inward meanings; the primary became secondary; the 
eternal familiarity yielded more and more to the tem- 
poral ] that which had been the most intimate became 
alien. Man was fully awake, realising his peculiar des- 
tiny as a progressive conscious being. His philosophy, 
passing out of native impressionism, became, through 
notional abstraction, the ground of the exact sciences ; 
his language passed into its secondary meanings; loose 
thinking came to be called close and rigid, as confined 
within definite limitations ; art, in like manner, passed 
from its purely vital field into that of representa- 
tion, of images and similitudes; the sacrament of kin- 
ship was weakened by the expansion of the family into 
wider communities ; and humanity flew out of its chrysa- 
lis, as a planet from its nebulous matrix. The dead and 
the divine became remote, no longer in immediate cor- 
respondence, but visiting men as ghosts or as angels — 
in either case still retaining their old divine designa- 
tion as Elohim. The human cycle, distinct, self-con- 
scious, and self-sufficient, sought completeness in the 
visible world, evading and denying the eternal. The 
conscious regard was mainly forward and upward, 
spurning the roots of the Tree of Life, looking rather 
to the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. God had re- 
moved from His world to His heaven. Sheol was in- 
habited by weaklings, and death became in human 
thought the dread descent into that shadowy realm of 
impotence and insignificance. 

The Heroic age as represented in Homer's Epics — 
especially in the Odyssey — had already lost the native 
sense of the invisible world and all homely familiarity 



44 A STUDY OF DEATH 

therewith. The Hades of the Odyssey is a world of 
gloom into which the glories of the earth pass as into 
a garden of faded flowers. When Odysseus, still be- 
longing to the world of the living, is permitted to enter 
the confines of this awful realm, a throng of pallid 
spectres presses forward with insane hunger to drink the 
blood of his propitiatory sacrifice. He sees Achilles, 
and the burden of his old comrade's speech with him 
is envy of the joys of life in the cheerful light of day. 
The western sea bordering this underworld — the ele- 
ment of water itself being associated with dissolution — 
was the haunt of Gorgons and Chimaeras, of Circe and 
the Sirens, whose charms and sorceries wiled men to 
nameless degradation and ruin. Homer's Poems and 
the great Hindu Epic — the Mahabarata — show the 
Aryan race at a much more advanced stage of civilisa- 
tion than is generally supposed ; and one important 
evidence of this is the fact that already the Powers of 
Darkness have been submerged and are held in awful 
abeyance. The Eumenides have already been trans- 
formed into avenging Furies. 

The Babylonian conception of the underworld was 
even more degenerate from the primitive idea. Our 
first historic acquaintance with Phoenicia and Chaldea, 
as with Egypt, is at a time when these countries are al- 
ready famous for mighty cities, engaged in commerce 
and in manifold industries \ and to their peoples the 
thought of the world beneath the waters was like that of 
a vast necropolis, whose dusty ways are untroubled as 
in the suspense of an endless dream. Yet there was no 
contrasting idea of heaven as a possible abode of mor- 
tals after death ; all alike must pass from the life of a 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 45 

sunlit world to this realm of shadows. The earthly 
aspirations of living men, in the full tide of youthful 
strength engaging every energy in the accomplishment 
of definite results, were jealous of invisible powers, 
whose work seemed a negation of their own positive 
constructions. 

This apparent denial of Death was an illusion nour- 
ished by the very powers which it sought to thrust into 
outer darkness and oblivion — nourished especially in 
the heart and conscious thought of man, because it was 
his peculiar destiny to express to the uttermost the 
earthly mastery and the temporal familiarity ; to lose 
himself in the monuments of his art, whose duration in 
time seemed a blazoned contradiction of eternity ; and, 
like one in a dream, to be buried in his terrestrial 
economies. 

The denial began with the first conscious progres- 
sion — the first lapse from instinct into rational proc- 
esses, but it was completed only when man became 
wholly absorbed in his Time-dream, when, with eyes 
closed to the invisible world, he came to think of that 
world as itself dormant and oblivious. The Eternal 
taking upon itself the masque of Time, so man, one 
always with the Eternal, became a part of the mas- 
querade, contributing to its delicious and painful be- 
wilderment through disguises of his own, in the deep- 
est sense inhabiting the world. And Death was the 
master of the revels. In his secret heart is lodged 
the power of a resurgent life, even as it is Lethe who 
is the mother of Memory. He it is — this invisible 
Angel of Life — who out of the rich darkness puts forth 
the blade and bud and babe ; all the fresh and tender 



46 A STUDY OF DEATH 

luxuriance of growth is but the imagery of his abun- 
dance. His potence is the hidden spring of youth. But 
also it is he who is confronted at every turn as a smil- 
ing wrestler inviting to conflict ; he who uplifts appear- 
ing to the outward vision as one who threatens a fall 
— an archer inciting to protection against his own ar- 
rows, to wariness against his waiting destruction. To 
man lost in the things of time, he who is the Deliverer 
appears as Gaoler — he who alone faces The Real as 
the King of Shadows ! 



VI 

But to the primitive man — at least to our imaginary 

type, never, indeed, in any record, known to us as 

wholly free from the outward entanglement 

irtue ot — Death and the underworld were not held 

Annihilation. 

as thus irreconcilably alien, nor as thus 
shorn of their might. 

The native impression, on the visible side, regarded 
the universe as a living reality — the diversification of 
the divine life— and, on the invisible or vanishing side, 
felt the elastic tension and expansion of that life as a 
vaster reality. This impression was not confined to 
the term of an individual existence begun at birth 
and ending in death, but embraced all appearance 
and disappearance, having a sense of constant pul- 
sation, in which there is always a coming and go- 
ing, as in an ever- changing garment that is being 
woven by a shuttle now darting into the light and 
then back into the darkness. This reflex move- 
ment, as connected with vanishing things — with all 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 47 

things as momently vanishing — spontaneously re- 
bounded to the central souree, and was not interrupted 
or distracted by any too fixed regard of the external 
world, but rather took that world with it on its refluent 
tide, bathing it forever anew in the pristine font of an 
eternal life. 

In the dissolving view disappearance was not merely 
negative ; it was more positive than appearance. It 
was from the ground that Abel's blood cried unto 
the Lord. Something of this feeling remains among 
the Chinese, who having written their prayers upon 
paper, then burn the paper, having more faith in the 
obliteration than in the literal expression. There is 
marvellous virtue in annihilation. The mystery of the 
universe can be nakedly disclosed only in the death of 
the universe ; nevertheless it is the mystery of every 
moment of every living thing — lost in the life of that 
moment and recovered in its death. 



VII 

We dwell upon this native sense of the wonder 
which life has in its fresh and radiant appearances and 
its more marvellous vanishings, because it 
helps us to see how natural is that transcen- ^fRe^t^ 
dental mysticism which by elastic rebound 
overleaps the apparent finality of death ; which finds 
in the point of rest the initiation of a miraculous mo- 
tion, so that zero becomes the symbol of the Infinite ; 
which has such faith in Life as to give no credence to 
its apparent diminutions as signs of weakness, seeing 



4-8 A STUDY OF DEATH 

in them rather the intimations of some mighty trans- 
formation already begun. Such a miracle was wit- 
nessed in an eclipse of the sun — especially in a total 
eclipse, when complete annihilation seemed to be fol- 
lowed by renascence. 

It is very difficult for us to even imagine this native 
mystical apprehension of an eternal life. We have the 
impression in some degree awakened in us by vast bar- 
ren places, by the immobility of landlocked waters, by 
the silence of deep forests, and in seasons of unbroken 
solitude. It is not a sense of lifelessness in these situ- 
ations, but of deeper life suggested through the ab- 
sence of color and sound and motion, which are usually 
so prominent in our perspective. In the outward silence 
the inward Voice is heard. To us, perhaps, the Voice 
seems alien, but to the primitive man it w r as that of a 
Familiar. We shrink from intimations which he court- 
ed, his solicitation having become for us a dread solici- 
tude ; and the Way frequented by him — kept open be- 
tween him and his ancestral home — we seek to close, 
setting a seal upon every sepulchre, barring out the 
revenant. In spiritualism and occultism we attempt 
an awkward coquetry with vanished souls — and in this 
casual necromancy how antique, indeed, seem our cor- 
respondents, even the nearest of them ! In insanity 
there appears to be an abnormal restoration of the 
atavistic channel. How significant, then, it is to note 
that there was a time when, in a sane mood and with- 
out jugglery of any sort, the living had communion with 
kindred souls departed — a cherished intimacy which 
made the darkness friendly and as fragrant as the 
breath of love, and which with resistless charm drew 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 49 

them within the shelter of overshadowing wings, with- 
in the circle of fatherly and motherly might and 
bounty. 

VIII 

The naturalness of this mysticism distinguishes it 
from mediaeval and modern mysticism. In the primi- 
tive view, while the unseen was the larger 

1 to Mediaeval 

reality, the visible world was not less real, and Modem 
nor was the fresh and eager desire for that Mystlclsm - 
world in any way suppressed or deprecated. Its sub- 
lime negation, whereby that which passed from vision 
entered into a new and greater glory, had no like- 
ness to the Buddhistic Nirwana, though it may have 
been identical with the earliest meaning of Nirwana as 
entertained by the primitive Aryan. Modern religious 
mysticism is not content with the natural transcendency 
of a transforming life, and is therefore disposed to sac- 
rifice Nature to the supernatural, so that its consid- 
eration of the external order of things, whether as di- 
vinely or humanly ordained, falls into the slough of 
pessimism. Only the blood that leaps into the quick 
and full pulsation of earthly life can have an elastic re- 
bound to its eternal font. The sense of fatherhood 
and motherhood, imperatively linked with the sacra- 
ment of kinship among all primitive peoples, could not 
have tolerated the Tolstoian view of marriage. Only 
artificial uses were excluded from primitive life, and 
even these lay ahead of it as inevitable in the natural 
course of progress ; but, these not yet existing, the 
abuses of convention prompted no revolt like that 
which enters into modern speculation. 



50 A STUDY OF DEATH 

The denunciation of selfhood which is the key-note 
of all modern mysticism could have had no place in a 
primitive estate, in which selfishness had no expression 
save as the natural postulancy of childhood — a great 
hunger to which all things responded. The need most 
real was that of fellowship. Exiled from his fellows, 
man in the presence of Nature experiences a strange 
sensation. We say that a man is born alone and that 
he dies alone ; but he is born of his kind and to his 
kind he dies, so that, in either case, fellowship is em- 
phasised. But, in human embodiment, confronting 
the physical world, unsustained by human companion- 
ship, his loneliness is supremely awful, and, if pro- 
longed, would in time deprive him of reason and 
speech and of every distinctively human characteristic. 
Nature, to the solitary individual man, is dumb and her 
ministration meaningless. In this situation he is mor- 
ally and spiritually a nonentity ; he can have neither 
selfhood nor communion. He is not a normal animal, 
but defective, degenerate man. The isolated man is a 
man wholly, uselessly, irretrievably lost. Neither life 
nor death has for him any meaning, and to him God 
can in no way be revealed. He is nourished to no 
purpose, increased for no proper function, and even his 
diminution and disappearance seem anomalous. If 
we could suppose him to have never had human fel- 
lowship, he would be even physically incomplete, a lost 
half of a being, the dominant system of his cellular or- 
ganism — an imperium in imperio — having no response 
and mocking his empty arms, however much of the 
world they might hold, despising his pain and travail 
as utter vanity. Life would have no romance of its 



NATIVE IMPRESSION^ 51 

adventure and the universe no prize in its treasure- 
house worth the winning or for whose loss one might 
grieve. Only he who loves can weep, and man loves 
not the world nor self until he has loved his kind. 

Not selfishness, then, but sympathy is man's native 
feeling. Only in a fellowship can he find himself, only 
in a human kinship the divine. The cosmic prepara- 
tion, outside of himself and in his own organism, is not 
for an individual but for humanity; it is the founda- 
tion of loving fellowship and broad enough for uni- 
versal brotherhood ; indeed, the operations of the phys- 
ical world as related to man can neither have their 
full effect nor be fully understood save in such a broth- 
erhood. The preparation is for love. The very di- 
versity of individuation, the apparently sealed envelope 
of separate embodiment, forbidding fusion, stimulate 
association and enhance its charm. The first man- 
child born into this fellowship may become his broth- 
er's murderer; ambition may produce dissension and 
promote violence, and the very closeness of family and 
tribal relationship may lead to conflict with other 
equally solid leagues, and so appear dissociative ; but, 
in the end, crime, oppression, and war will compel 
larger solidarity and ampler freedom. The enlarge- 
ment may substitute conventional for natural bonds, 
but within the scope of the widest convention there 
will remain the family on a surer basis, and the social 
activities in their freest sympathetic expansion ; and 
thus Love that seemed to be hidden will remain lord of 
human hearts. 

In any period, therefore, of human progress, selfhood 
is but the reflex of fellowship, first human and then 



52 A STUDY OF DEATH 

divine, or rather both in one. A subjective mysticism, 
contemplating as possible the exclusion of selfhood by 
an influx of divine life, is irrational. It is the expan- 
sion of selfhood, the deepening of its capacity through 
its exhaustive demand upon all ministrants, human 
and divine, that at the same time provides a guest- 
chamber for the Lord and an abundant treasure-house 
to be exhausted in ruinous expenditure for the service 
of man — a service most effective when it most truly 
expresses selfhood. 

Since all religious mystics, of whatever creed and of 
whatever race, have, from the beginning of a philosophic 
era, agreed in this assault upon selfhood, their unani- 
mous expression commands respect. The general as- 
sent to a proposition, as, for example, that the sun re- 
volves about the earth, does not prove the truth of the 
proposition, in the absolute sense, but it does indicate 
a general impression as its real and true basis. What 
impression, then, is it that has been so generally enter- 
tained as to be the real basis of this mystical revulsion 
from selfhood ? The word mysticism is from the Greek 
mtiesis, the closing of the eyes — that is, one turns from the 
sensible appearance, shuts his eyes to the visible world, 
in order to see true. Some fallacy, therefore, some in- 
evitable delusion, is conveyed to the soul through the 
appearances of things to the eye of sense, something 
which must be corrected, even reversed, in the spiritual 
vision. The spiritual is thus opposed to the natural, 
even as the Creator has a perfection as opposed to the 
imperfection of the creature. The universe stands in 
contradiction to its source — the natural manifestation 
opposed to the spiritual principle. How readily has 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 53 

this radical distinction between the creature and the 
Creator commended itself to the prophet and spiritual 
philosopher of all ages ! " Yea, the stars are not pure 
in His sight. How much less man who is a worm !" 
" There is none good but one." If a man turns from 
the entire visible world to such truth as can be only 
spiritually discerned, shall he not also turn from him- 
self, making the vastation complete ? If nature is an 
ignis fatuus, misleading him, how much more deceptive 
the imaginations of his own heart ! 

There is in this impression the deepest of all truth 
both as to insight and as to action : as to insight, be- 
cause it is the comprehension of evil as associated with 
all manifestation, divine and human ; as to action, be- 
cause it is a recognition of the necessity of repentance 
and regeneration to all the transformations that have 
ever been or ever shall be wrought in man or in the 
world, so that the universe itself is forever being re- 
pented of and created anew — the new creation being a 
redemption. 

The truth thus stated brings the impression resting 
upon it into accord with the native and natural mysti- 
cism ; the evasions and perverted expressions of it 
have reflected the errors of existing systems — such er- 
rors as were illustrated in Oriental dualisms (most no- 
tably in Manicheism), in Neo- Platonic speculations, 
like those of Philo Judaeus concerning creation as 
the work of good and evil angels, and in much of med- 
iaeval and modern Christian theology. All these er- 
rors illustrate the fact that philosophy, even as a part 
of theology, is in its development not exempt from the 
evil which is inextricably involved in all manifestation, 



54 A STUDY OF DEATH 

and so is something to be itself forever repented of 
and born again ; these errors being a contradiction of 
the spiritual principle from which they are the depart- 
ures. 

The central principle of all systems, divine or hu- 
man, impels the departure and demands the return, 
thus involving the destruction of every edifice that is 
builded; it gives into the light and takes into the 
darkness; it determines the maturing strength, the te- 
nacity of structures, the consistency of systems, and it 
determines the dissolution also of all embodiments, 
for renewal and transformation. He who would for- 
ever hold to the structure, losing himself therein, and 
looking not to the source of life, is in prison, and for 
him the illusions of the light become delusions ; but, 
on the other hand, he who turns from his dwelling 
save for new and brighter dwelling, who seeks the dark- 
ness save for the renewal of desire, who in expecta- 
tion of immortality denies resurrection as fresh em- 
bodiment, sets his face against the mortal hope, and 
for him there is only the prospect of some level world 
in which there is no world to come. But Life knows 
no such sterile issue, and into whatsoever chamber 
the Bridegroom shall enter, again he shall go forth 
therefrom, rejoicing as the strong man to run a race ! 

The ultimate mysticism will be that of science vital- 
ised by the Christian faith and of that faith illuminated 
in all its outward range by science ; and it will be seen 
to be one with native intuition, but including a perspec- 
tive commensurate with the visible universe. Christian- 
itv will again accept Nature, as indeed it did in its 
nrime, holding: it to be one with the Lord, and find in 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 55 

its wonders as disclosed by science the counterpart of 
the glory revealed in him ; while science, which is al- 
ready insisting upon so much that no man has ever 
seen, will translate its invisible elements into the living 
language of faith. 

The sequestration of spiritual life as something by 
itself, apart from the life of the world and incommuni- 
cable therewith, is an exaltation that cannot be long 
maintained, since the power of an eternal life must al- 
ways be manifest in the freshness of time, in the re- 
newal of the world. A new creation is only a new 
nature, having its own trope, its proper action and re- 
action, and the inseparable companionship of life and 
death. 

What new embodiment awaits us at death — that 
death in which we have no part and that has no part 
in us — we know not, but we know that it is only trans- 
formation. "We shall all be changed." A new 
sensibility would, in this present life, reveal to us a 
new universe. When we come to consider that what 
we now know as sex and what we know as death are, 
in the present order, only specialisations occurring at 
their due time in organic development, we may com- 
prehend a possible order in which these would have 
no such meaning for us — some such order as our Lord 
intimated when he said of the children of the resur- 
rection that " they shall not marry nor be given in mar- 
riage ; neither shall they die any more." But change 
itself, unspecialised Death, these belong to any life, 
as does also the unspecialised essential ground of 
what, in all manifestation, we call evil. 



56 A STUDY OF DEATH 



IX 

These considerations lead us to dwell more at length 
upon the native impression which regarded life and 
death as universal and inseparable. 

The primitive man made no distinction between the 

specialised and the unspecialised. The vast 

L _ -";"; : - background of the unseen to which he was 

conjoined by ancestral familiarity, and which 

therefore had for him only homely and friendly aspects, 

was very near, an intimate council-chamber to which 

he still had ready access and from participation in 

whose eternal decrees he had never been excluded. 

Here it was that Love and Death and Grief had been 

assigned their part and place in the cosmic harmony. 

In the visible foreground — to the primitive man a 
very narrow field, in which a mere fragment of hu- 
manity confronted the mere fragment of a world — were 
to be enacted the mysteries of the ancient council- 
chamber, represented in masquerade, wherein the old 
meanings were to some extent disguised, but by a veil 
far more transparent than that which we have clothed 
them with in modern thought and custom. Between 
the visible and the invisible there was a frank and easy 
interchange, with no strain of religious awe, no logical 
embarrassment, no grave solicitude. The human, the 
natural, and the divine were blended into one very 
simple drama, from which we would turn in mental, 
aesthetic, and moral contempt. 

There was no distinction such as we make between 
living and non-living matter. The whole universe was 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 57 

living and sentient; and so persistent was this native 
impression of an animate world that it was entertained 
for centuries by philosophers, and even by Kepler, who 
first formulated the laws of planetary motion. The 
domain of death was coextensive with that of life : 
Nature was not only living in every part, but in every 
part also dying. In this earliest faith even the gods 
were mortal. That sacrament of kinship in which love 
and death and grief were first known to the heart of 
man, and known as inseparable, was a covenant which 
had no limitations. Divine love, like the human, was 
without death unavailing, lacking its crowning grace. 

The Olympian dynasty of gods, hopelessly immortal, 
was a later conception ; and this dynasty represented 
relentless law and force, loving not man, nor coming 
within the pale of human sympathy* During the whole 
period of ancient paganism, the human heart turned 
from these passionless divinities to those of their 
sacred mysteries — to gods who could die and grieve. 

The first estate of paganism extended the intimacy 
of human kinship till it included the visible universe. 
The fire upon the hearth-stone was but a spark of the 
flame of Love that spent itself for all needs. The 
bread and wine that gave strength to man were sym- 
bols of the largest ministration — a descent and death 
for human increase. The mother, who brought forth 
children from her body and from the same body nour- 
ished them, was the type of the divine motherhood, 
whose bounty was freely exhausted for all, even unto 
self-desolation. 

In such a faith there could be no rebellious com- 
plaint against pain and frailty and death ; the ab- 



58 A STUDY OF DEATH 

sence of these would have confounded men, making 
of life a nondescript, a shadowless, glaring absurdity. 
Nearness to life, in this native feeling of its reality and 
universal pathos, brought a reconcilement of its con- 
tradictions, and the exclusion of any element would 
have disturbed its harmony, even though that element, 
seen by itself, might have appeared discordant. 

The primitive faith accepted death and evil, as it 
accepted darkness and frost, and at the same time re- 
garded them as parts of Love's cycle. Thus it empha- 
sised the limitless divine bounty and indulgence, and 
had no conception of human or divine justice. Pain 
was not penalty. Blood that was shed called for 
blood, but, outside of the bond of kinship, the voice 
was silent, alien, untranslatable. 



The social order has progressed through stages in- 
volving a constant and ever-widening departure from its 
first estate of comparative simplicity and natural piety. 

While man is pre-eminently a social being, the first 

and natural bond of flesh and blood kinship is so intense, 

reinforced by its vitality confined within a narrow field, 

as to seem exclusive and dissociative. The 

Weakness of P arent has a jealous love of offspring which 

Primitive makes even a neighbor seem alien and hos- 

Paganism. 

tile. How much stronger must be the na- 
tive feeling of a community thus bound together tow- 
ard others not included in this alliance ! There is in 
this feeling a strange mingling of fear and curiosity. 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 59 

The desire for communication will in the end overcome 
the jealousy. The most interesting feature of the ear- 
liest historical records recently brought to light by ar- 
chaeological exploration is the frequency of messages ex- 
changed between princes of peoples widely separated, 
indicating also exchanges of visits and gifts and often 
intermarriage. Travelling was an ancient passion, 
and the eagerness with which the Greeks at their Olym- 
pic games listened to the foreign gossip of Herodotus 
has been characteristic of men in all times. There is 
in the satisfaction of this curiosity not merely the charm 
of novelty, but an indication of that amicability which 
is the ground of hospitality. In the beginnings of com- 
merce a certain shyness was apparent — as in the custom 
of leaving articles of barter at places agreed upon ; and 
the fact that no advantage was taken of this shows how 
strong, in the crudest conventions, was the sentiment of 
honor between parties too timid to face each other in a 
mercantile transaction. Thus from the first there was 
indicated the germinal principle of a social order, based 
upon honor and justice, which was to extend over the 
habitable globe. 

As the living bond was relaxed, surrendering its nat- 
ural force for the gain of structural strength, the native 
intuitions belonging thereto were in a corresponding 
measure dissipated. The bond of kinship was physio- 
logical and instinctive, giving free play to the animal 
nature in the full range of its sympathies and also of 
its animosities ; but it is instinct that is submerged by 
rational and conventional systems, and hidden beneath 
the more complex operations that are its specialisation. 
The expansion was inevitable, resulting in the establish- 



60 A STUDY OF DEATH 

merit of a government quite different from the patri- 
archal, of treaties between peoples, and of internal police 
regulation ; national consolidation ; empire as the issue 
of conquest; institutional stability, and the consequent 
development of science, art, and industry : an organised 
moral world. 

Knowing how severe a strain primitive Christianity 
has sustained in the material and intellectual develop- 
ment of western nations, we can readily understand 
what havoc ancient civilisation made of primitive pa- 
ganism. Among the Indo-European and Semitic peo- 
ples, the worship of ancestors was a dying cult in the 
very dawn of that civilisation. The same intellectual 
culture which banished the gracious ancestral divinities 
brought in a dynasty which ruled the world by inflexible 
law, and which was in accord with the social solidarity 
based upon justice. The Sacred Mysteries were re- 
tained, and with them the popular faith in a dying Lord 
who rose again, and in a sorrowing mother, as also in a 
sentient universe, which was inseparably associated with 
the divine death and sorrow and triumph — so that there 
still remained for the human heart a field of divine love 
and pathos into which were lifted its own love and frail- 
ty, its passion and pain. But there had been a remark- 
able change wrought in this faith. For, while only in 
the minds of a few had the ancient philosophy succeed- 
ed in interposing an insensate mechanism between man 
and God — a realm of matter, lifeless and deathless and 
so cut off by icy barriers from human sympathy, — while 
the scientific view which thrust the human heart back 
upon itself, isolating its hopes and fears from their con- 
nection with the general course of nature, was not wide- 



NATIVE IMPRESSIONS 61 

]y accepted by the people, owing to the limited diffu- 
sion of knowledge, yet in the very development of a 
complex order there was an inevitable tendency toward 
this fatal schism ; and the idea of a future state as one 
of rewards and punishments was generally adopted. 
The recognition of a moral order under divine sanc- 
tion ; the conception of retributive justice operating in 
the future as in the present life, only with greater effi- 
ciency; the distinct separation in the minds of men be- 
tween good and evil, so steadfastly maintained that the 
moral ideal implied the possibility of absolute rectitude 
as the result of conscious determination, a perfectness 
unknown to Nature and wholly excluding evil — these 
were the results and reflexes of a social economy far ad- 
vanced beyond its primitive estate and brought within 
rational control ; and these modifications of the relig- 
ious view served incidentally to reinforce the restraints, 
however arbitrary and conventional, of civil government 
and social custom. 

Because paganism, in its earliest estate, was not based 
upon the spiritual principle of universal brotherhood ; 
because it never transcended the limitations of an im- 
agination strictly confined to natural cycles forever re- 
turning into themselves, even as associated with the 
unseen world, it was therefore irreparably damaged by 
the incursions of a hostile philosophy, which preyed 
upon its vitals, as did Jove's eagle upon those of the 
Titan Prometheus. The destruction or the devitalisa- 
tion of its material embodiment left it no place of ref- 
uge, since only in that embodiment had it a habitation. 
Its disintegration could not be followed by rehabili- 
tation from any principle within itself. As its action 



62 A STUDY OF DEATH 

in faith lacked the complete expression of a spiritual 
fellowship, so its reaction and contradiction in the out- 
ward social order was incomplete in the realisation of 
equity. 

The structure of paganism, considered as a whole, in 
its religion and its outward economy, was, like its archi- 
tecture, low-arched,* too limited in its scope to escape 
ruin as a whole. It iacked the Master Mason to build 
it high, availing of weight for support, of descending 
movements for new ascents, of death for life. It was 
overweighted, and crumbled to the ground all along the 
lines of its construction, beautiful in its ruins, which in 
every part indicated a magnificent virile effort, and at 
the same time a fatal inherent weakness. 

We shall see hereafter, when we come to consider the 
structure of Christendom, that whatever may be the de- 
partures of the latter from its spiritual principle — de- 
partures repeating and often exaggerating the defects 
of paganism — yet its scope is large enough for the com- 
pletion of its cycle, through the consummation of its 
social and intellectual development, in a return to that 
principle ; and we shall also see how science itself in 
its later revelations helps to bring the human reason 
back to the recognition of evil — or what we call evil — 
as a reaction proper to life in all its manifestations, di- 
vine or human. The fraternal sympathy, which is the 
ultimate fruit of Christian faith, will restore, in new and 
higher meanings and appreciations, the universal pathol- 
ogy naively implied in primitive intuition. 



THIRD BOOK 
PRODIGAL SONS: A COSMIC PARABLE 



CHAPTER I 
THE DIVIDED LIVING 

I 

T^ORMLESS, imageless, nowhere, nowhile, non-exist- 
* ent — a Void : and over against this, all that is, 
that ever was, and ever shall be — a Universe. Every- 
thing from nothing. We have no other 
phrase for the mystery of Creation; save as c^don. 
we express it personally in the words Father 
and Son. For that which, in this contradiction be- 
tween the essential and the manifest, we call Nothing, 
for want of a nominative, is the infinite source of all 
life. When we say of the visible world that it is the 
expression of Him, we are saying as best we can that 
the world is because He is ; but even this idea of 
causation falls short of the mystery, of which, indeed, 
we can have no idea, since our imagination cannot 
transcend the world of images. How can there be an 
image of the imageless ? We proceed through a series 
of negations, abolishing time and the world, existence 
itself, and when our annihilation is complete, the Void, 
in our spiritual apprehension, brings us face to face 
with the Father of Beginnings ; the boundless empti- 
ness becomes the boundless pleroma, or fulness. 

Therefore it is that Death, which brings to naught, 

5 



66 A STUDY OF DEATH 

discloses the creative power of life. If this power 
were simply creative and not re-creative, formative but 
not transforming, the world would be the seamless, 
never -changing garment of God. From the first, in 
all this cosmic weaving, Death is at the shuttle, com- 
pleting the trope in every movement, every fold ; with 
his face turned always to the Father, he whispers re- 
lease to every living thing; and thus he becomes the 
Leader of Souls, bidding them turn from the world 
that is, that he may show them a new heaven and a 
new earth, calling them to repentance and a new birth. 
He is the strong Israfil, winged for flight, and ever 
folding his wings for new flight. Under his touch all 
things turn — to noon and then to night ; to maturity 
and then to age , but we shall not find him in the old 
which we call dead — that he has already left behind, 
bidding us come and follow him, while with one hand 
he points to a new generation upon the earth, and 
with the other .to an unseen regeneration. 

Thus inseparably associated with the genetic, Death 
is bound up with the mystery of Creation itself. The 
evening and the morning were the first day. 



II 

Who can bridge the chasm between the unseen sub- 
stantive in the grammar of Life and its genitive case ? 
Who shall find for us the dominant in the musical gamut 
— that original trope of genesis, through which the sing- 
ing stars danced into the field of Dawn ? Who shall 
show us the invisible fulcrum of the first leverage, the 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 67 

initial of the celestial mechanics ? There is no ship 
we can make to launch upon the ocean which separates 
the finite from the infinite, time from eternity, the world 
from God. 

There is, indeed, no such ocean, no such separation 
— no chasm to be bridged. The web of existence may 
have interstices ; in time and space there are intervals 
between things, degrees, similitudes, diversi- 
ties ; media that at once separate and unite. Firs^Kinship. 
Here nearness and distance are comparative ; 
but no individual existence is near any other with that 
intimacy which each has with the Spirit of Life ; there 
is no familiarity in the world like the eternal familiarity. 
It is spiritually represented in the nearness of the eter- 
nally begotten Son to the Father ;' the Son is forever 
Sent, yet is always in the bosom of the Father. The uni- 
verse, expressed in the term Nature, reflects this inti- 
macy ; it is forever being born, flying from its source, 
yet there is in the consistency of all its parts in one 
harmonious whole no bond so strong as that holding 
it to the Father. Procreation is the nearest image of 
creation, involving at once otherness and likeness. 

Existence seems a denial of Being, because we are 
unable to predicate anything of Being save by the ne- 
gation of our predicates concerning existence. More- 
over the progressive specialisation of existence seems to 
involve successively more and more a surrender of the 
potency and wisdom that, in the essential source of 
all, are infinite. It is as if, in time and in the world, 
the Father had divided unto all His living, every added 
complexity signifying greater multiplicity and so a 
greater division. The denial is apparent only. In 



68 A STUDY OF DEATH 

reality all visible existence is to invisible Being as the 
stream to its fountain, so consubstantial therewith that 
it should be thought of as one with rather than as re- 
lated thereto, than related even as effect to cause. The 
embodiment is proper to the spirit. The ever repeated 
creation is genesis, a constant Becoming. The Eternal 
becomes the temporal. The boundless life is the 
abounding, and its bounds, or limitations, while on the 
visible side contradicting boundlessness, are really the 
bonds of kinship with the Eternal. The quality of 
life is the same in the limitations as in the boundless- 
ness. Finitude is of the Infinite ; Form is of the un- 
seen shaping power ; and Transformation is essentially 
genetic, creative. 



Ill 

In an unchanging world — if such a world were con- 
ceivable — we would have no apprehension of this genetic 
quality of life, which is not suggested in a persistent ap- 
pearance, but only in disappearance, or disappearance 
followed by reappearance. That trope of a 
ing view: its c y c ^ e through which existence vanishes is, 
Spiritual Sug- therefore, a dissolving view fraught with spir- 

gestion. ' & & r 

itual suggestion. The end is lost in begin- 
ning. All transitions, all the phenomena of change, 
become luminous points in consciousness, leading from 
the fixed to the flowing, from ends to beginnings, from 
the visible shapes passing before us to the invisible 
shaping power ; and when anything so passes as to ut- 
terly escape vision — like the passing of a soul — we 
have the deeper suggestion, from which arises a tran- 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 69 

scendent mystical vision ; a power is released in us 
which follows the power that has been released, into its 
unseen realm ; and so we are ever pursuing that which 
flies, even through the gate of its Nothingness, to ap- 
prehend, though we may not define, its essential qual- 
ity, as our eyes follow the ascending mists till they van- 
ish and we see the clear heaven, from which they are 
no longer distinct, being one therewith and participant of 
its powers. 

IV 

As through the trope which is Death is the entrance 
to greater potency, so in that -of Birth there is an ap- 
parent surrender of power, a veiling thereof in embod- 
iment; and the first Genesis, if there were 
a first, was the primary abnegation, wherein The Involve - 
the Infinite became the Finite. 

Standing at the gate of Birth, it would seem as if it 
were the vital destination of all things to fly from their 
source, as if it were the dominant desire of life to enter 
into limitations. We might mentally represent to our- 
selves an essence simple and indivisible that denies 
itself in diversified manifold existence. To us this side 
the veil, nay immeshed in innumerable veils that hide 
from us the Father's face, this insistence appears to 
have the stress of urgency, as if the effort of all being, 
its unceasing travail, were like the beating of the infi- 
nite ocean upon the shores of Time, and as if, within the 
continent of Time, all existence were forever knocking 
at new gates, seeking, through some as yet untried path 
of progression, greater complexity, a deeper involve- 



7° A STUDY OF DEATH 

ment. All the children seem to be beseeching the Fa- 
ther to divide unto them His living, none willingly abid- 
ing in that Father's house. But in reality their will is 
His will — they fly and they are driven, like fledglings 
from the mother nest. 



The story of a solar system, or of any synthesis in 
time, repeats the parable of the Prodigal Son. in its 
essential features. It is a cosmic parable. 

The planet is a wanderer (J>la?ies) and the individual 
planetary destiny can be accomplished only through 
flight from its source. After all its prodigality it shall 
sicken and return. 

Attributing to the Earth, thus apparently separated 
from the Sun, some macrocosmic sentience, what must 
have been her wondering dream, finding herself at once 
thrust away and securely held, poised be- 
Th pw! lgal tween her flight and her bond, and so swinging 
into a regular orbit about the Sun, while at 
the same time, in her rotation, turning to him and away 
from him — into the light and into the darkness — for- 
ever denying and confessing her lord ! Her emotion 
must have been one of delight, however mingled with 
a feeling of timorous awe, since her desire could not 
have been other than one with her destination. De- 
spite the distance and the growing coolness, she could 
feel the kinship still ; her pulse, though modulated, was 
still in rhythm with that of the solar heart, and in her 
bosom were hidden consubstantial fires. But it was 
the sense of otherness, of her own distinct individuation, 



THE DIVIDED LINING 71 

that was mainly being nourished, this sense, moreover, 
being proper to her destiny; therefore the signs of her 
likeness to the Sun were more and more being buried 
from her view; her fires were veiled by a hardening 
crust, and her opaqueness stood out against his light. 
She had no regret for all she was surrendering, think- 
ing only of her gain, of being clothed upon with a gar- 
ment showing ever some new fold of surprising beauty 
and wonder. If she had remained in the Father's 
house — like the elder brother in the Parable — then 
would all that He had have been hers, in nebulous sim- 
plicity. But now, holding her revels apart, she seems 
to sing her own song, and to dream her own beautiful 
dream, wandering, with a motion wholly her own, among 
the gardens of cosmic order and loveliness. She glories 
in her many veils, which, though they hide from her 
both her source and her very self, are the media through 
which the invisible light is broken into multiform illu- 
sions that enrich her dream. She beholds the Sun as 
a far-off insphered being existing for her, her ministrant 
bridegroom ; and when her face is turned away from him 
into the night, she beholds innumerable suns, a myriad 
of archangels, all witnesses of some infinitely remote 
and central flame — the Spirit of all life. Yet, in the 
midst of these visible images, she is absorbed in her in- 
dividual dream, wherein she appears to herself to be the 
mother of all living. It is proper to her destiny that 
she should be thus enwrapped in her own distinct action 
and passion and refer to herself the appearances of a 
universe. While all that is not she is what she really 
is — necessary, that is, to her full definition— she, on the 
other hand, from herself interprets all else. This is the 



72 A STUDY OF DEATH 

inevitable terrestrial idealism, peculiar to every individ- 
uation in time — the individual thus balancing the uni- 
verse. 



VI 

In reality, the Earth has never left the Sun ; apart 

from him she has no life, any more than has the branch 

severed from the vine. More truly it may 

of Distance" be said that the Sun has never left the 

Earth. 

No prodigal can really leave the Father's house, any 
more than he can leave himself; coming to himself, he 
feels the Father's arms about him — they have always 
been there — he is newly apparelled, and wears the sig- 
net ring of native prestige; he hears the sound of fa-' 
miliar music and dancing, and it may be that the young 
and beautiful forms mingling with him in this festival 
are the riotous youths and maidens of his far-country 
revels, also come to themselves and home, of whom also 
the Father saith : These were dead and are alive again, 
they were lost and are found. The starvation and sense 
of exile had been parts of a troubled dream — a dream 
which had also had its ecstasy but had come into a 
consuming fever, with delirious imaginings of fresh 
fountains, of shapes drawn from the memory of child- 
hood, and of the cool touch of kindred hands upon the 
brow. So near is exile to home, misery to divine com- 
miseration — so near are pain and death, desolation and 
divestiture, to " a new creature " and to the kinship in- 
volved in all creation and re-creation. 

Distance in the cosmic order is a standing- apart, 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 73 

which is only another expression of the expansion and 
abundance of creative life ; but at every remove its re- 
flex is nearness, a bond of attraction, insphering and 
curving, making orb and orbit. While in space this 
attraction is diminished — being inversely as the square 
of the distance — and so there is maintained and em- 
phasised the appearance of suspension and isolation, 
yet in time it gains preponderance, contracting sphere 
and orbit, aging planets and suns, and accumulating 
destruction, which at the point of annihilation becomes 
a new creation. This Grand Cycle, which is but a 
pulsation or breath of the eternal life, illustrates a truth 
which is repeated in its least, and most minutely di- 
vided, moment — that birth lies next to death, as water 
crystallises at the freezing point, and the plant blossoms 
at points most remote from the source of nutrition. 



VII 

We need to carry this idea of Death, as associated 
with Creation and Transformation, into our study of 
visible existence ■ otherwise the claims of philosophy 
as well as of faith are likely to be sacrificed The 
to those of a science which, in its persistent Tendency to 

Ignore the 

specialisation, tends to wholly ignore the Creative 
principle of creative life. We have no fear nncip e " 
of honest agnosticism, of dilettanteism, or even of in- 
fidelity. The real danger lies in the inflexible certi- 
tude of the specialist. The peril touches not religion 
alone, nor is natural science its only source. The ex- 
treme specialisation of modern life in every field con- 
fines thought as it does effort and tends to conserva- 



74 A STUDY OF DEATH 

tion and stability. Its perversity is in its opposition to 
reaction ; it will not readily admit a solvent, and resists 
every subversive or destructive element, unwilling to let 
the dead bury its dead. This tendency affects theology 
more than it does physical, political, and economic sci- 
ence. The children of this world are wiser in their 
generation than the children of light, because they are 
not so closely bound by unvital traditions, and also be- 
cause a merely utilitarian interest compels solvency, 
change, revolution. 

The perversion of human thought, in its attitude tow- 
ard Death and Evil, and its consequent exclusion and 
ignorance of divine absolution as a constant and inti- 
mate creative transformation in Nature and humanity, is 
especially easy to the modern mind which regards Nature 
as impersonal and man's relation thereto as accidental 
and temporary and mainly significant in its utilitarian 
aspects. 

Generally the terms of science are unvital. Force, 
matter, motions, vibrations, laws : these terms give us 
no impression of a living world. Science is confined 
to a formal conception of existence, and is concerned 
with quantity (the measure and proportion of elements 
and their relations in time and space, mathematically 
expressed) rather than with quality. Even the theo- 
logian thinks of eternity as duration, as quantitative 
rather than qualitative. The Latin for reason is ratio ; 
and to the Greek all learning was mathesis, from which 
the term mathematics is derived. Next to the stress 
which science lays upon the form is that which it gives 
to uniformity, from which it makes those generalisations 
that are called laws. These limitations of science to 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 75 

consideration of method and proportion are inevitable ; 
but since form is of the essence and quantitative 
relations have a qualitative ground, the true philos- 
opher apprehends a reality beneath as well as in the 
form, the shaping power and wisdom transcending as 
well as immanent in the visible shapes of the world, and 
thus in every fresh scientific discovery he finds a new 
intimation of spiritual truth. All the manners of the 
universe become to him traits of the divine Personality 
in whom it " lives and moves and has its being." Too 
often it happens that the scientific specialist, when he 
transcends his specialty and enters upon the larger 
field of philosophy, brings with him into that field the 
unvital terms which are there inadequate and mislead- 
ing. How, for example, can one who insists upon ever- 
lasting uniformity, and so upon invariable, laws, express 
truly the spiritual apprehension of Life as a transform- 
ing power? The incompatibility is more conspicuous 
if these laws are regarded as impersonal, as belonging 
to matter, whether independently or by divine delega- 
tion once and for all, and, however imposed, as limiting 
the divine operation. 

VIII 

But all human specialisation, whether in science or 
elsewhere, follows Nature's own leading. We deprecate 
materialism, mechanism, and utilitarianism, but these 
are most conspicuous in the cosmic order. , 

r The Divine 

Man's development of outward structure, so- Pattern of 

cial, political, and industrial, corresponds to 

the cosmic development which prepared the way for 



76 A STUDY OF DEATH 

his progress, which, indeed, by the constitution of firma- 
ments gave him a standing-place in the world. God is 
the first materialist. Mechanism is celestial before it is 
earthly and human. 

Seeing, then, a world prepared for him, a world of 
things ready for his arbitrary fashioning — metal and 
stone and wood — things cut off from their living cur- 
rents by natural sequestration, or which he might him- 
self so cut off for food, raiment, and shelter, and, later, 
for these uses in more ambitious and luxurious fashion ; 
seeing, in his further progress, that he might lay hold 
upon the living currents themselves and divert them to 
his use in more complex and heavier undertakings, di- 
viding them according to his requisition, or even holding 
them in storage for his convenient and leisurely division ; 
taking note, moreover, of a constant providence, answer- 
ing to his prudence, and the regularity of Nature's hab- 
its, suiting a never-failing ministration to his needs — is 
it strange that man should have yielded to the divine 
temptation, conforming to the divine exemplar, the pat- 
tern shown to him not only upon every mount, but in 
every depth and in every path opened to his eager 
feet? 

For, on the human side, there was not merely passive 
yielding and conformity; there was desire, which seized 
with violence upon a kingdom at hand. Save unto de- 
sire there is no temptation, no stimulation save of a 
faculty, no ministration but to a craving capacity. All 
embodiment is but the extension of importunate desire. 
Man's entreating of the world is first and always a pas- 
sionate entreaty; he " has no language but a cry." As 
his embodiment is the outward projection of his clam- 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 77 

orous need, so all he feeds upon and gathers to himself 
as a possession, all that he unites with through kinship, 
affinity, and the ever-broadening communion with Nat- 
ure and his kind, is an extension of his organism in 
time and in the world, an expansion of his exhaust- 
less litany. And all his prayers are answered. What- 
ever may be man's sense of responsibility, 
the divine responsibility encompasses the Dlvin ?3 e " 

tr - J r sponsibility. 

universe, not only at every point unfailing, 
but all-inclusive, embracing all wanderings and all the 
wanderers. There is no system in which light is broken 
by shadows and alternates with darkness, where the 
darkness is not of divine ordinance as well as the light; 
no prison-house or place of exile in which man can 
ever find himself which was not prepared for him from 
the foundation of the world. 



IX 

The Father hath, indeed, divided unto all His living. 
In the structural specialisation which has gone on 
with the division, one of the most striking 
peculiarities is the arrest and suspense of s ^i^ al 
living currents, giving things upon the earth 
the appearance of stability — a tendency to solidifica- 
tion, to hardness, especially at points of superficial con- 
tact, until the hardness becomes brittleness, and from 
extreme attrition all things seem to come to dust. While 
this is more noticeable in inorganic matter, it is also a 
characteristic of organisms. With the hardening of the 
earth's crust there comes to be a tougher fibre of plant 
life, and the vertebrate animal appears ; and in each 



?8 . A STUDY OF DEATH 

individual organism age is indicated by the induration 
and fragility of structure. The hands grow hard like 
the things they handle, as do the soles of the feet from 
walking. Use and wont beget indifference and even 
cruelty in the moral nature. Institutions have the same 
tendency; rituals become formal, governments rigid 
and perfunctory, industry a dull routine. Social re- 
finement at its extreme is hard enough to take a polish, 
and aims to present a front of cold and staring imper- 
turbability. 

The points of contact between man and the outside 
world, after the period of his first childlike wonder has 
passed, are mainly those associated with his handling 
of material things that may be moved about and manip- 
ulated at his option. The timid reverence that belongs 
to tender sensibility is dissipated by familiarity, which 
leads first to naive play, wherein there still remains a 
trace of shyness, and then to the bold workmanship of 
the artificer. The wandering stream of nomadic hu- 
manity is arrested, and the movable tent gives place to 
the fixed dwelling. Social stability obtains firm founda- 
tions ; the shepherd with his living flocks becomes an 
episode, lingering in the fields outside the growing city ; 
metals, at first used only for ornament, are coined into 
tokens of commercial exchange ; temples are built for 
the worship of Him who was once sought in every liv- 
ing fountain ; and over the dust of kings arise the 
pyramids. 

All this is but a continuation of that terrestrial de- 
velopment by which the rock-ribbed continents emerged 
from the flowing seas ; and as upon the continents the 
web of life is woven in more varied shapes of plant and 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 79 

bird and beast, so about the fixed structures of man's 
making flows the human current in a slower movement, 
but statelier and more manifoldly beautiful. The insu- 
lation and stability are only relative j nothing is perma- 
nently held aloof from the general circulation. Water 
held in the closest receptacles sooner or later finds its 
way to the sea ; and the sea, which is forever erod- 
ing and transposing continents, is itself continually dis- 
solving in vapour. Resistance becomes the fulcrum 
of leverage. There is no point of rest in the uni- 
verse. • 

Nevertheless the progressive specialisation of life 
lays stress upon the separateness and insulation, and 
this emphasis of Time punctuates the Word from the 
beginning, until that Word is made flesh in the Christ, 
who gathers up all the fragments that none may be lost, 
who shows us the Father, and who is himself utterly 
broken and made whole again before our eyes, that we 
may comprehend the glory of Death. 



X 

The emphasis of Time begins with Creation. Be- 
ginning is genetic, creative, on its unseen side eternal, 
though conceivable by the mind only as in 
time and space. Time, etymologically, means Th o e f ^^ asis 
something cut off, a section, a season {tem- 
pestas)\ and in like manner we think of space as some- 
thing in allotment. Study demands attention — an arrest 
of thought regarding an object also held in suspense. 
Thus contemplation (from the same root as time) im- 



80 A STUDY OF DEATH 

plies the intent beholding of things confined within a 
circle cast about them, like a spell in magic. 

All these terms, signifying confinement, definition, 
arrest, suspense, are expressions of finitude, of a world 
passed, as it were, from its genitive to its accusative 
case — to the field of objective reality, appearing in this 
view as measurable matter and motion, as broken in 
time and space into related parts and sections and even 
into inert particular fragments that often, though near- 
est our hands and feet and emphatically real, seem 
irrelevant, trivial, and inconsequent. 

It is far away from the plenty of the Father's house 
to the husks on which men starve. There the abound- 
ing, eternal life — here the limitation and involvement ; 
there the infinite power — and here at the end of things 
mere dust and impotence, empty travail, stumblings, 
vexation, defeat. Finally the extremes meet — starva- 
tion and the feast, sickness and healing. Not a sparrow 
falls to the ground without the Father's notice, and the 
very hairs of our head are numbered. 

We must needs continually keep this everlasting 
nearness of home at heart, and in this personal way, 
because of the apparent remoteness, and because the 
ordinary course of thought as well as the tendency of 
scientific analysis is toward an impersonal view. 



XI 

The divided living or, as it is scientifically phrased, 
the specialisation of life, is a development stretching 
through long periods, each of which is marked by the 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 81 

appearance of some new form of existence upon the 
earth. While the older theology accounted 
for each new stage of development by a ^-^t^iT" 
series of special creations, modern science 
has sought to exclude altogether the idea of any crea- 
tion, regarding each new form of life as evolved from 
antecedent forms through natural selection and the 
modification of environment. The older theology, as 
represented by Paley, attempted to explain the mar- 
vellous adaptations which constitute the rhythmic har- 
mony of the universe by the operations of an intelli- 
gence patterned after the limited and specialised human 
understanding, first choosing to create and then arbi- 
trarily choosing means for the accomplishment of ra- 
tionally conceived ends. Modern science has, in the 
rejection of this idea, gone to the extreme of repudiat- 
ing divine purpose, explaining cosmic co-ordination 
by an impersonal selective wisdom inherent in matter 
itself. 

By substituting creative specialisation for special 
creations and postulating a supreme Personal Will 
and Intelligence, transcending specialisation The Tnm 
but immanent therein, with a purposiveness scendentPer- 

1 • T SOn ' 

spontaneous in its working, not according 
to plan as the result of choice (in our human sense of 
the term), but showing a plan, not limited by alterna- 
tive, but itself the ground of alternation, Christian phi- 
losophy presents to science not merely the ground of 
common agreement, but a view involving no more mys- 
tical assumption than is involved in the postulations 
made by science itself of an invisible ether and an in- 
visible atom — whether the latter be considered the ulti- 

6 



82 A STUDY OF DEATH 

mate material particle or a vortical motion of the ether 
— a view, moreover, which, accordant with faith in a 
loving Father as the source of all life, also clears the 
scientific field of problems that from their very nature 
are insoluble by any possibly discoverable facts. Such 
problems as are presented in the questions : What is 
the origin of organic life upon the earth ? and How is 
the psychical developed from the physical ? cannot be 
solved by any data lying within the limits of scientific 
investigation; they arise, indeed, and assume their most 
formidable shape through lack of faith in the sufficiency 
of creative life for its own transformations. There is 
really no greater chasm between the inorganic and the 
organic, between neurosis and psychosis, than there is 
at any stage of the progressive specialisation. 

Regarding specialisation as at every point a creative 
act, the problems disappear ; Life itself becomes the 
great bridge-builder — the pontifex maximus ; and con- 
sidering, furthermore, that reaction proper to Life, where- 
by it has solvency and escape from any individual syn- 
thesis, and even in due time repents itself of an entire 
species, rising again in some other body or in some 
wholly new type of embodiment, then indeed that sin- 
gular Voice, saying / am the Resurrection and the Life, 
may give the transcendent note to philosophy as it does 
to faith. 

It is indeed a singular Voice, and proclaims a truth 
which, from the foundation of the world, has been 
hidden. 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 83 



XII 

The progressive specialisation of life is not through 
evolution primarily, but through involution, every new 
stage of progress being a new folding of the 
veil. The universe is not an unfolding of £G<xi 
God, but a folding of Him away from Him- 
self, until the manifold hiding is completed in the hu- 
man consciousness which is the ultimate fold of all. 
There could be no more arbitrary and mechanical con- 
ception of God than that of Him as a vast involute, im- 
plicating the universe. Progress would then be from 
what is most complex, through a series of explications 
to what is most simple. This is pantheism in its bald- 
est form, abrogating the mystery of Creation, which is 
also abrogated in the theory of emanation. 

Both the transcendency and the immanence of crea- 
tive life begin to be hidden with the beginning of ex- 
istence. When God said Let there be Light, the light 
became the first veil hiding Him. Therefore it is that 
no man hath seen the Father at any time, and when we 
speak of His power and wisdom and purpose we have no 
real idea of these attributes, which are known to us only 
as mediate and limited ; and when we say that He is 
Love, we express not the reality, since our knowledge 
of love like that of light is from broken images only. 
From the beginning, then, is the eternal life hidden, 
and though the veil hiding it be light itself, that which 
is concealed is beyond our expression in thought or 
speech. 

At every successive stage of the cosmic develop- 



34 A STUDY OF DEATH 

merit, or rather envelopment, there seems to be a fresh 
surrender of potence and sentience, though with great- 
er truth it may be said that these are more and more 
veiled ; the organic tending toward variability and fal- 
libility as compared with the inorganic, and the vege- 
table instinct being surer than the animal. With the 
growing complexity there is increased uncertainty and 
indirection, until we reach the hesitancy and vacillation 
of rational volition. 

As heat is given up in the contraction of the earth 
and the incrustation of its surface, and as the solar hre 
is subdued to a lambent flame which runs through all 
the variegated terrestrial life, so is the universal pi 
modulated more and more down to its measured beat 
in the animal : and with the increase of temperament,, 
adaptation considered as correlation, and outward cor- 
respondence, interaction and interdependence are more 
pronounced, just as with the loss of heat there is great- 
er conductivity. Sentience, which is really mightier in 
the less specialised forms of life, yet appears outward- 
ly and in definite expression more intense and finer 
in more complex forms, and is more communicable 
mediately as it is the more patent. With the veiling 
comes gain as well as loss, so that we properly think 
of later forms as more advanced, though in 

Gain cf Per- _ _ ° 

spectivein a certain sense division signifies diminution. 

bight is possible because the eye is a re- 
fractive lens, and thus only because the solar light is 
tempered by the medium of an atmosphere. The 
blind feeling of which sight is a specialisation is a 
surer sentience, a divination knowing no distance or 
indirection, a wisdom therefore whose wavs are never 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 85 

missed, an unbroken clairvoyance ; but the intense, 
confined specialised sense of ocular vision is an out- 
ward openness, aware of expansion. That which was 
once blind, feeling its way by dead-reckoning, like a 
mole in the dark, now takes in the heavenly blue and 
(under the veil of night) the stars beyond, making for 
itself a wondrous perspective. The same blind feeling 
specialised as hearing catches vibrations slower than 
those of light, making for itself another perspective of 
beautiful harmony., 

XIII 

It is not unity which is divided ; our conception of 
unity is the reflex of our thought of the manifold. It 
is not identity which is diversified. Absolute homo- 
geneity as the initiative of a universe is the 
most sterile mental notion ever conceived „ rop . lc 

Reaction. 

in the attempt of philosophy to evade the 
mystery of Creation. From such homogeneity there is 
no genetic thoroughfare — no way out. The idea of 
absolute heterogeneity, on the other hand, leads only 
to chaotic distraction, which has no recourse, no reac- 
tion, no way back reflexively into the consistency of a 
universe. The genesis itself — a mystery hidden from 
human comprehension, yet mystically apprehended — 
is action and reaction, and we see that as a mani- 
festation it involves at once the idea of otherness and 
consubstantiality, the nearness and kinship, at every 
remove, being the reflex of distance. We have a me- 
chanical and therefore inadequate illustration of this 
action and reaction, as essentially one and inseparable, 



86 A STUDY OF DEATH 

in all tropical movement. Thus the earth in her flight 
from the sun is, at every moment of the flight, return- 
ing ; as in her rotation her turning from the sun is at 
every point a turning to him. The reaction is in the 
action, and we cannot logically separate the one from 
the other ; and when we separate them historically, we 
make the diversification primary, supposing flight to 
precede return, repulsion attraction, and all function- 
ing its inhibition. Following this rule of precedence, 
we should reverse the procedure of Herbert Spencer's 
synthetic philosophy and give the initiative to hetero- 
geneity. 

XIV 

Certainly it is the reflex, the feeling of the ancient 

bond of nearness, that is more and more hidden from 

the planetary prodigal in that far-country perspective 

which at every step becomes more bewilder- 

F^mUiarh 14 * n & in * ts V2irie ^ cnarm of beauty and de- 
light. There is no new surprise which has 
not in it some homely reminiscence, but, by the very 
urgency of destiny, it is the surprise itself which cap- 
tivates and absorbs, leading the wanderer further 
afield. 

XV 

There is this preoccupation and expectancy in what 
we call the inorganic world. Here, at some critical 
point, there is a sudden departure from the uniform 
succession of phenomena, and a new synthesis is ap- 
parent, not explicable by any antecedent situation or by 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 87 

any elements visibly entering into the first combina- 
tion. These transformations do not come about ac- 
cording to such laws of causation as are formulated 
by the human mind for the explanation of phenomena 
that come within the range of conscious volition. By 
no calculation based upon any deductions of science 
could these surprising changes have been anticipated. 
" If we conceive," says Mr. N. S. Shaler,* " an intelli- 
gent being looking upon a mass of nebulous 
matter having only those forms of associa- s *" pn f e and 

J Prophecy. 

tion which are possible in gases, we must 
believe that such a being would have been entirely 
unable, if his intelligence were less than infinite, to 
form any conception of the results which would arise 
when that matter came to take the present shape of 
this earth." But that intelligence which is immanent 
in these transformations is prophetically expectant, 
seeing the end from the beginning. It is not, there- 
fore, to be supposed that to this profound intelligence 
there is no delight in the wonderful surprises of the 
ever-changing world. To man also belongs a prophet- 
ic vision, however hidden or obscured, looking iner- 
rantly toward the Things to Come, and it is because of 
this undefined and sure expectation, and not because 
of anything outwardly seen in the novel wonders of pro- 
gressive life, that he has delight in them ; while a life 
that in all its changing scenes should be the exact fulfil- 
ment of definite mental anticipation would, on the other 
hand, be tiresome, not answering to the unseen hope. 
Nor is there such uniformity of routine even in the 

* The Interpretation of Nature, p. 55. 



88 A STUDY OF DEATH 

succession of grand cycles as to mar the divine delight 
in creation. If at the end of each of these cycles the 
entire universe is dissolved, the synthesis of a new uni- 
verse would not be the exact repetition of that which 
preceded it. No cycle of life returns into itself ; the 
death completing it is always a transformation. 



XVI 

In the progressive cosmic involvement the reality of 
Life — in its essential attributes — seems to be more and 
more hidden beneath appearance. Form hides the 
formative ; and form, persistent and held in apparent 
suspense, veils transformation. The appearance of 
uniformity in the physical world especially impresses 
our human intelligence, which is confined in its ob- 
servation and investigation to a very limited period 
of cosmic development — the period of great- 

Uniformity . r . 

Veiling Trans- est apparent stability. If our point of view 
rma ion. were transferred to an epoch indefinitely re- 
mote, before the appearance of organic life, while we 
would have the sense of order, yet would uniformity 
seem a transparent veil. We were not indeed shut 
out from that simplicity; rather are we shut into the 
present manifold complexity. The quality of life is the 
same, whatever the situation ; and its manifestation in 
the simplest form was a Habit, however loose and flow- 
ing in its longer waves of pulsation and its marvellous- 
ly swift alternations — its appearings and vanishings. 
When he who is eternally the representative of man 
spoke of sharing with him the glory of the Father be- 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 89 

fore ever the world was, he was speaking of our native 
heritage. The divine nature never had a habit that 
was not also human, and the man we know — the ulti- 
mate creative manifestation — still reflects that nature, 
as its very image. 

That period of comparative simplicity, when the 
world which we call inorganic and lifeless was the 
only living world, was vast as the ocean when meas- 
ured against the mere island in time which is occu- 
pied by animate existence, as we know it, in all its 
wondrous variety. Now are we sheathed in integu- 
ments that hide the older world which we still unwit- 
tingly inhabit. When the darkness of our little night 
lays open to our eyes the starry spaces we may still 
behold the plasmic milky- way of that long night of 
time whose possibilities were mightier than we can 
even dream in such sleep as now befalls us. 

What we know as desire is away from all this, pro- 
jecting its embodiments into that narrow island of 
specialised life which, after all, still rests upon that 
hidden ocean. We bask in what seems to us the 
nearer and more familiar sunshine, and turning from 
that simple estate which we still hold in the darkness 
and which still holds us — that older deep which ever 
felt the brooding Spirit of Life — we rejoice in the 
broken lights and casual acquaintances, in the color 
and temperament, in the poise and modulation of a 
suspended world. We glory in difference as a dis- 
tinction and in individual isolation as the proper in- 
tegrity of an organism, its inviolable virtue. 

To us, in the suspense of a fixed order, the process- 
es of Nature seem to be movements in cycles that re- 



90 A STUDY OF DEATH 

turn into themselves. " The sun ariseth, and the sun 
goeth down," says the Preacher, " and hasteth to the 
place where he ariseth. The wind goeth toward the 
South and turneth about unto the North ; it turneth 
about continually in its course, and the wind returneth 
again to its circuits. All the rivers run into the sea. . . . 
Unto the place whither the rivers go thither they go 
again." Science, especially in the departments of 
physics and chemistry, easily regards these closed 
circuits as somehow independent of and isolated from 
creative action and reaction. The physical world is 
thus considered as inanimate, having neither life nor 
death but only motion proceeding from inherent forces 
and according to laws of its own. So completely is 
the universe separated from a personal creator that 
even those who believe that it was originally His 
creation accept the illusion of delegated and second- 
ary forces that are like the servants of the vineyard 
abandoned by its master, who has gone abroad, but 
who may at his option return and in some marvellous 
way assert his dominion. 

But in reality God is always in His world, and al- 
ways working the great miracle of creation. 

XVII 

" No man hath seen the Father at any time," but 

the Son shall reveal him. The appearance 

a Pre-Messi- of organic life upon the earth was the ful. 

amc Reveia- fQ men t; f wna t may without irreverence be 

tion. J 

called the Messianic expectation of Nat- 
ure. It was indeed a miraculous conception of the 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 91 

Spirit of Life, and was not without wonderful prepa- 
ration and prophetic adumbration. 

The later and closer scrutiny of the processes of the 
mineral kingdom show that in many respects these are 
not so sharply distinguished from those of living or- 
ganisms as was formerly supposed. " It has been 
found that finely divided particles of many substances 
when suspended in a fluid will, under the influence of 
some forces as yet not well understood, take on an in- 
cessant movement. So perfectly does this motion re- 
semble that of some of the microscopic forms of the 
lower simple organisms that naturalists at first sup- 
posed that in observing these movements they were 
dealing with living beings. The crystals of the rocks 
perform functions which were once supposed to be 
peculiar to animals and plants ; they undergo changes 
in their constitution, often taking in new materials, 
which they sometimes decompose into their elements 
and rebuild in the new growth. So, too, crystals are 
in a way capable of multiplying themselves, for when 
one begins to form, others of the same species, as it 
were, sprout from it, much in the manner of certain 
lowly forms which are certainly alive. " * 

After millions of years of cosmic preparation the cell 
appears — the precious nursling of the ages. Yet, if 
a human intelligence could be supposed to have been 
present in the world before this remarkable advent, it 
would have been unable to mentally conjecture what 
was about to emerge from the matrix of a world that 
seemed already so old and barren ; nor indeed would 

* The Interpretation of Nature, by N. S. Shaler, pp. ill, 112. 



92 A STUDY OF DEATH 

such an intelligence, brought face to face with this 
long-expected child of Time, so lowly at its birth, 
wrapped, as it were, in swaddling-clothes and ignomin- 
iously stalled, have had any prescience of its mighty 
meaning and mission. 

Nevertheless this was, as we now can see, a new 
creation, a transformation so wonderful that only be- 
cause thereof does the world seem to us to be alive. 
The Prince was already within the portals of the Pal- 
ace of the Sleeping Earth, and the heart of the virgin 
planet was stirred by a new dream — the vision of a 
lord to come who was older than the Sun. The Sun 
also knew, for he was the flaming Witness of the Spirit 
of Life, Who was now to begin His earthly ministra- 
tion with mighty miracles, turning water into wine and 
wine into blood. " He must increase, but I shall de- 
crease." 

Already, indeed, from the beginning of cosmic spec- 
ialisation, there had been the diminution and descent 
— the macrocosmic yielding to the microcosmic mys- 
tery, the whole magnificent universe narrowing its cir- 
cles, contracting its spheres, veiling its potencies and 
lessening its velocities, stooping down to serve the 
coming Prince of a new kingdom, all its strong, wise 
ministrants gathering at his nativity, like worshipping 
Magi, bringing special gifts, also, like the gold and 
myrrh and frankincense of the Eastern Kings, signify- 
ing Abundance, Burial, and Ascension. 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 93 



XVIII 

The cell is not the introduction of life into a dead 
world. The universe was from the first living and sen- 
tient in its macrocosmic order, organic in that order. 
The term inorganic is not properly applica- 
ble to what was from the first an organism Mystery in a 
and constantly reaching forward to more l ew orm " 
complex organisation. Nevertheless the cell marks a 
pivotal and critical point in the progress of existence. 
Its appearance is a surprise, a fresh embodiment of the 
all-shaping Power and Wisdom ; but there is nothing 
more mysterious in a germ that grows than in a min- 
eral which crystallises ; it is the old mystery in a new 
shape. 

The new integration is not explicable through what 
precedes it ; it would be truer to say that it is the 
explication of all its antecedents. It is itself a new 
hiding of life; a fresh strain of cosmic tension, a fur- 
ther division and suspension, a more discrete modula- 
tion, a more exquisite temperament. The outward bal- 
ance of things, already so nicely adjusted, maintained 
through oppositions and contradictions, through at- 
tractions and repulsions, through ascents and descents, 
may have been suddenly disturbed through some vast 
dissolution of existing forms, liberating mighty forces 
for a new continence, and so have regained equilibra- 
tion by the storage of this precious argosy, freshly 
launched upon the ocean of existence. But, even so, 
we are only attempting to express the mystery in the 
terms of an outward equation, what is lost on the one 



94 A STUDY OF DEATH 

side being gained on the other, as the ascent of one 
arm of the scale is a descent of the other. Dissipa- 
tion of energy is the concomitant of all integration ; 
but these terms are not related to each other as cause 
and effect (any more than one-half of a circle is the 
cause or effect of the other) ; they are merely comple- 
mentary. The specialisation is creative. 

The evolutionist, while he helps us to see what is the 
true outward sequence, confesses his inability to show 
causation in the sequence. " The ultimate mystery — 
the association of vital properties with the enormously 
complex chemical compound known as protoplasm — 
remains unsolved. Why the substance protoplasm 
should manifest sundry properties which are not mani- 
fested by any of its constituent substances, we do not 
know; and very likely we shall never know. But 
whether the mystery be forever insoluble or not, it can 
in no wise be regarded as a solitary mystery. It is 
equally mysterious that starch or sugar or alcohol should 
manifest' properties not displayed by their elements — 
oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon — when uncombined. It is 
equally mysterious that a silvery metal and a suffocat- 
ing gas should by their union become transformed 
into table-salt. Yet, however mysterious, the fact re- 
mains that one result of every chemical synthesis is 
the manifestation of a new set of properties. The 
case of living matter or protoplasm is in no wise ex- 
ceptional.'" * 

* John Fiske's Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, vol. i., p. 434. 



THE DIVIDED LINING 95 



XIX 



This protoplasm is the nebulous beginning of what 
to us seems like a distinct universe, peculiarly open to 
our sympathetic comprehension because of 
its intimate association with our earthly fort- voivTmemhi 
unes and destiny, since humanity is its ulti- the 0r § anic 
mate issue and fruition. Physical and chem- 
ical processes seem remote and obscure save as they 
come into immediate contact with our life : in the air we 
breathe, the water we drink, and the component ele- 
ments of the food we eat; in the minerals which lend 
themselves to our use in various ways , and in the light 
and heat and electricity which seem like a part of our 
vitality, and which outwardly are elements of comfort 
or disturbance, conservation or destruction, according 
to their temperament. And beneath these is the univer- 
sal physical bond of gravitation, w r hich enters into the 
rising wave of life, in certain forms of attraction, as a 
ladder of ascent, and in the falling as a lethal burden. 
Modern science has given us a clearer idea of these 
forces and elements in their quantitative relations, and 
a wider and more effective adaptation of them to our 
use ; has made of their rhythmic motions a fairy tale 
for wonder, a beautiful poem; has shown how the 
world has given harbourage to vegetable and animal 
life, within what narrow limits of temperature is possi- 
ble the chemical action upon which molecular organi- 
sation depends, and within what still narrower limits 
a physiological synthesis can be maintained ; how ele- 
ments like oxygen and hydrogen, which at a high degree 



96 A STUDY OF DEATH 

of temperature combine to form watery vapor, may at a 
lower degree rest side by side for independent action, 
and how peculiarly essential is nitrogen to the storage of 
animal heat : in all these ways indicating the care and 
providence of a loving Father in preparing a dwelling- 
place for man. But we are so involved in the organic 
synthesis that we translate all physical terms into those 
which are more intimately familiar to us through our 
specialised physiological sensibility and mental percep- 
tions, our language in its primary meanings leaning 
rather to the former, and, in its secondary, to the 
latter. 

In the period of naive impressionism the whole uni- 
verse was humanised, and even the gods were included 
in this general incarnation ; and, considered simply as 
to its reality, this impression was profoundly wise— a 
deeper divination than the human reason reaches in 
its supersensuous mathematics and formal knowledge, 
though these have more truth of perspective and a 
more exact discrimination. The extreme rationalistic 
view of the world excludes all humor from its dry light ; 
reduces the sensibility to the humble offices of a ser- 
vant to the intellect — otherwise burying it out of sight ; 
and rejects physiological and anthropomorphic inter- 
pretation. This is the inevitable tendency of special- 
isation, which at every step is a new veiling of life — 
of its essential wisdom as of its potency. The truth of 
chemistry is not the truth of physiology, as is shown 
by the inadequacy of the chemical analysis of food as 
a test of its physiological action. So the truth of 
physiology is not that of psychology. We see, then, 
how remote and alien the true and proper life of what 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 97 

we call the inorganic world must be from our mental 
vision and even from our sensibility. 



XX 

We are so accustomed to regard different forms of life 
as higher or lower according to their place in a progres- 
sive series, and thus to unduly emphasise the super- 
lative importance of the most specialised Higher and 
existence, that our view is distorted. In Lower Life - 
this way we come to depreciate the living values of 
pre-human nature. We form the same comparative 
estimate of different periods of human history, under- 
rating the eras of greatest simplicity; -and in like man- 
ner, considering an individual life, we attribute a su- 
perior excellence to maturity, as if we should prefer 
August to May. Consistently with such judgment, we 
might reasonably question why manhood is not sus- 
tained at its ascendant; why one generation should pass 
away and another come, repeating the crudeness of 
infancy ; why the sun is not maintained at the zenith ; 
why civilisations disappear ; and why, indeed, all sys- 
tems are doomed to dissolution. Reversing our pref- 
erence in any of these cases, our view would have the 
same fault of disproportion. 

Our human conduct, under the extreme limitation of 
arbitrary and fallible choice, is so much a matter of 
experimentation and discipline, involving moral prefer- 
ence, wherein rising is a betterment and falling a vili- 
fication, and having for its ideal field some lofty pla- 
teau of stable and perfect goodness, unmixed with evil 



98 A STUDY OF DEATH 

and undisturbed by reactions, that we come to regard 
the progression of all life as having this moral char- 
acter, as if the Creator were in the same toils of ex- 
perimentation, learning to create, and improving with 
each new creation. To rid ourselves of this illusion, 
whereby our limitations are transferred to the In- 
finite, we have only to see that while there is al- 
ways the world to come, it is not a better world, 
according to moral preference, but a new world ; that 
the creative life repents of the good grown old as well 
as of the inveterate ill ; that this life is in its essential 
quality a transforming, regenerative life. 

The vital perspective is that of a circle, wherein 
compensation is everywhere apparent — not a circle re- 
turning into itself, but involving endless permutation 
and variability. We need not resort to the familiar 
similitude of a spiral ascent. To the undisturbed spir- 
itual insight there is no higher or lower, no superior- 
ity of the molecular to the molar, of the chemical to 
the physical, of the physiological to the chemical, or 
of the psychical to the physiological. As has been 
already said, the quality of life is the same whatever 
the situation. 

When we think about nebulous expansion, ethereal 
vibration, molar or molecular attractions and repul- 
sions, our thought is empty as compared with our sym- 
pathetic apprehension of those actions and passions 
which belong to what we call the realm of biology. 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 99 



XXI 

Our vision of life is like that of Jacob at Bethel, 
one of ascending and descending angels; but the an- 
gels descending are the same angels that ascend. If 
the world were only " inorganic," and such only it is 
believed to have been through the greater „ T1 , T 

& i fe Why the In- 

part of its existence, it would still have all organic Seems 
the excellence of life in its essential quality 
— an ineffable excellence of which we have no concep- 
tion. Its ascending angels for the most part elude 
our vision, only its descendent ministration being ap- 
parent to us. The side of the inorganic world present- 
ed to the organic is the dying side — chemical dissolu- 
tion next to physiological integration. The crescent 
organism confronts a world which is dying that it may 
live. The cosmic accommodations which have made the 
earth man's dwelling-place have been renunciations of 
life in his behalf ; and the dead moon is a nightly re- 
minder of that Calvary from which Nature stretches 
forth to us her skeleton hands and shows us her 
hard, dumb countenance. When our Newton comes, 
it is in the autumn field that he finds in a falling ap- 
ple the suggestion of the universal law — that of gravi- 
tation, the symbol of death. 

The sun himself is dying, giving forth his light and 
heat ; he is a true martyr — the witness of the Lord ; 
and the coal deposits buried in our earth ages ago are 
like the famed ossuaries of martyrs, having stored-up 
virtues for miracles of warmth and light and healing. 

We love to dwell upon this descent of the Lord and 



ioo A STUDY OF DEATH 

his angels in the world of inorganic matter, which we 
call dead ; in the light and heat and the refreshing 
rain ; in the virtues of the cooling earth ; in chemical 
disintegrations, and to see that it is all a descending 
ministration for the lifting up of organisms. It is a 
view of the world which invests with our pathetic 
affection its very debris and the dust we tread upon. 

Nature, in our observation of her apparently closed 
circuits, is known to us, outside of organisms, mainly 
in her descents for the risings of these. What are her 
own proper ascensions for this beneficent ruin, or 
what is her own World to Come — her transformation, 
answering to our Resurrection — is hidden from us. 

Biology, notwithstanding its rigid exclusion of the 
inorganic world from its proper scope, furnishes sug- 
gestions for the poetic and spiritual rehabilitation of 
that world in the human imagination, 

"And in our life alone doth Nature live, 

Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud." 

Modern sentimentalism has undoubtedly carried this 
ideal rehabilitation to an extreme, transferring to Nat- 
ure solicitudes wholly alien to her and purely human, 
and needing, therefore, for its correction, the scientific 
comprehension of what is peculiar to physiological and 
psychical specialisation. 



XXII 

The cell germ is the central sun of the physiological 
planetary system — the beginning of a new career 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 101 

of prodigal wandering. The earliest and simplest or- 
ganisms are unicellular, as if a new kind of universe 
were begun in a single - mansioned econ- n 

00 Speciahsa- 

omy. But what singular potency in this tion of Sex 
simplicity ! This is shown in the ease and 
quickness of reparation, by which any part of the or- 
ganism lost or destroyed is restored. If the body 
is cut in twain, each part continues its independent 
life; or rather we should say that such separation has 
not at this stage of development the meaning which it 
comes to have when the organism becomes more com- 
plex, consisting of interdependent members. While 
identity seems to be emphasised, yet there is the ten- 
dency to diversification. Reproduction is by division, 
by simple fission. In the infusoria reproduction is 
preceded by a comatose state resembling death, an 
arrest of activity during which the identity of the 
parts soon to be separated seems to be assuredly es- 
tablished ; and after the fission there is no distinction 
by which one part may be designated as the parent 
rather than the other. Such organisms, as Dr. Weiss- 
man n has shown, have a kind of immortality, suffering 
death only as an accident. The amoeba of to-day is 
the original amoeba. 

With the multiplication and diversification of cells in 
later and more specialised organisms, there is allotment 
of function, a division of labor and an interdependence 
of co-ordinate parts, and the same appearance of dele- 
gated powers which is characteristic of complex econ- 
omies, just as there seem to be secondary forces in the 
inorganic world, which we think of as acting indepen- 
dently and yet interdeperidently as mutually related. 



102 A STUDY OF DEATH 

With the specialisation of sex — a divulsion for union, 
a repulsion for attraction — death also appears as a 
specialisation, entering the world hand in hand with 
love. From this point the variation goes on with re- 
markable rapidity. 



XXIII 

The appearance of organic life upon the earth as a 

prelusive analogue of the appearance of the Christ-life 

in the human cycle has already been suggested. It is 

thus seen to be one of the successive revelations of the 

creative Logos. The analogy would require 

IftteCeii 1 a se P arate thesis for its full elaboration. 

It is only important here that we should 

draw attention to a few points touching our present 

theme. 

i. The organic involution is the apparent beginning 
of a motion of return. It is the beginning of the dis- 
closure of conscious life, reflecting Godward. This 
attitude of the vegetable and animal kingdoms was 
recognised by Swedenborg. 

2. The organic plasma, having its matrix in an ap- 
parently dead world, is the beginning of life in a pro- 
cession of generations. It is the physical analogue of 
that childhood which is the type of the Christ-life. 

3. Cell-life, in its simplest and most plastic forms, 
has a marvellous potential energy, with spontaneous 
power of self-reparation, and thus foreshadows miracle- 
working and redemption. 

4. The organism grows, and is thus the physical sym- 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 103 

bol of the increase and authority of the " more abun- 
dant" Christ-life. 

5. The most significant point of the analogy is the 
concurrent specialisation of sex and death : that with 
the love which is the basis of genetic kinship came a 
new mortality, just as in the spiritual development of hu- 
manity the love which was the ground of a divine-human 
fellowship was bound up with a divine-human death. 

These points, more fully dwelt upon hereafter, are 
here brought together as a natural introduction to the 
consideration of the organic movement toward incar- 
nation. 



XXIV 

Certain aspects of life, elsewhere hidden, are visibly 
revealed or suggested in the realm of physiological ac- 
tivity. For while the embodiments of this realm are 
veils hiding life, and are indeed more complex, a closer 
network and imprisonment, than are the manifestations 
of physical and chemical energy, they are at 
the same time more open to our study and ^f^ati?ns l 
comprehension. Their history is more re- 
cent, and has left its traces in fossil structures em- 
bedded in the rocks. Many of the earliest species of 
organic life remain in living specimens upon the sur- 
face of the earth for our observation of function as well 
as of structure. Moreover, to us as a part of this realm 
— its ultimate issue and consummation — there are in- 
timate disclosures of its processes in our own sensi- 
bility and consciousness. We know what desire is and 
aversion, hope and fear, pleasure and pain, action and 



i~4 A STUDY OF DEATH 

passion, faculty and capacity, aspiration and depres- 
sion, sympathy and conflict, confinement and release, 
rest and disturbance, bounty and want, demand and 
renunciation : and we know that structure is for these, 
and not these for structure. We breathe and eat and 
sleep and love and die ; and we have a sense of our 
incarnate action and passion as such, and apart from 
considerations transcending physiological limitations. 
Beneath these is the eternal ground of these, the Word 
which becomes flesh, and which in the flesh has again 
its glorious appearance as the Word ; but we are now 
considering what revelation of life there is in the won- 
derful organic development of incarnation itself, ex- 
cluding from the scope of our contemplation that 
specialised intelligence which distinguishes man from 
other animals. 

The transformations by which the u inorganic " world 
has come into its present state are hidden from us, 
whereas in the historic development of organisms the 
series, though not present to our view in its complete- 
ness, is to such an extent observable or indicated as to 
be profoundly impressive. Apart from the historic 
series, there is everywhere open to our observation a 
miracle of growing life which directly suggests the cre- 
ative power. Nature becomes to us a Book of Genesis. 
We seem everywhere to hear that first of all command- 
ments, Be fruitful and multiply. And in this book of 
Genesis how inevitably does the mind pass from the 
first chapter, in which the earth brings forth the herb 
yielding seed and the fruit-tree of every kind, whose 
seed is in itself, and every living creature, multiplying 
its kind, to the second chapter, in which it is declared 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 105 

that all these were created before their appearance — 
the plant " before it was in the earth and every herb of 
the field before it grew." The growth is the outward 
manifestation of that genetic quality which is the eternal 
attribute of boundless and abounding life. 



XXV 

We have seen that death, as a specialisation, enters 
the world with love. There is an adumbration of this 
association in the nearness of all desire to a kind of 
death. Nutrition is the rising of one wave 

Nutrition. 

next to the subsidence of some other, and 
the wave that rises is not the same wave that falls. 
Growth is genetic transformation. This nutrition is 
one of the most suggestive of the object-lessons fur- 
nished by organic life. The nucleus of a germ is first 
manifest as a living thing in feeding upon its envel- 
oping substance or integument. In the case of a seed, 
so long as the outward muniment about it is secure 
from dissolution, its power is latent ; but being buried 
in the. earth, where outwardly it is in peril, it inwardly 
escapes, is liberated from its imprisonment, and feeds 
upon its crumbling prison -walls. The nourishment 
thus begun is in the same way extended. The flame 
once kindled upon the altar spreads, devouring sub- 
stances beyond its original source of alimentation. 
The vegetable, rooted in the earth, feeds upon the ele- 
ments that come to it, these being broken for it, dis- 
solving for its integrity. The animal carries its roots 
about with it, having voluntary locomotion, and in its 



106 A STUDY OF DEATH 

wider range of selection compels its victims. The de- 
scent of the inorganic is for the rising of the vegetable, 
which, transforming the material for its subsistence 
from the earth and air, becomes itself a broken sacri- 
fice for a new transubstantiation, falling for the rising 
of the animal. From the first appearance of a cell to 
the advent of man stretch millions of years, and at his 
appearance the world has become his pasture, through 
numberless varieties of vegetable and animal life. The 
Lord is the shepherd. There has been this shepherd- 
ing from the beginning of organic existence, life feed- 
ing upon broken life. The functioning of organs thus 
nourished is a wave of motion rising next to the dis- 
solution of these members. And there are waves 
beyond these, not properly within the scope of our 
present consideration — the continuation of the de- 
scending ministration, until the Lord becomes the 
shepherd of souls— always a dying Lord. 



XXVI 

In the inorganic world we more especially note the 
division involved in specialisation and the progressive 
diminution, as in the contraction of spheres — the gravi- 
tational contraction of the sun being itself 

Organic Re- ° 

version of the a depression, or descent, for the generation 
norgamc. o £ ^ e k eat anc j light of the planetary system. 
But in organic specialisation we see the division as 
more conspicuously a multiplication — an increase. The 
abundance of life is visibly manifest. 

The vast amount of heat generated by the contraction 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 107 

of the sun must be very much diminished before organic 
life is possible upon the surface of the earth. But in the 
progression of organic life the store of heat is continu- 
ally increased. The earliest animals are cold-blooded. 
While the processes of the inorganic world tend toward 
an appearance of rigid uniformity and fixed stability, 
those of the organic render more conspicuous the ap- 
pearance of variation, and the more complex the organ- 
ism the greater becomes its instability; and in many 
ways the procession of organisms seems to reverse that 
of inorganic matter, though in reality it only makes 
visible to us tendencies and attributes of life which in 
the macrocosmic procession are hidden from us. This 
visible manifestion begins, indeed, for us in molecular 
organisation as shown in the field of purely chemical 
action. Thus the mineral, water, in its various states, 
solid, liquid, and gaseous, more than adumbrates the 
suggestions received by us from physiological action. 



XXVII 

The distinction we have noted seems to be rather 
between the molecular and the molar than between 
the organic and inorganic synthesis ; and this distinc- 
tion would doubtless disappear through a more inti- 
mate acquaintance with the molar universe. The 
atoms of a molecule imitate the motions of , 

Chemical Ad- 

the solar system — having attraction and re- umbration of 
pulsion and tropic movement, dissociation } 
and reassociation of the dissociated atoms. The 
study of solutions, combined with that of thermo- 



io8 A STUDY OF DEATH 

dynamics, and later with that of electro-dynamics, has 
thrown much light upon the vexed problem of the con- 
stitution of matter. But even the simplest observa- 
tions regarding so common a substance as water 
comprise phenomena that look back to primordial 
embodiments of mist and flame, and forward to the 
flame of life incarnate. In its gaseous form, water is 
absorbent of heat, which at the same time expands 
and lifts it, and yet with this expansion there is a ten- 
sion, as within the limits or bounds of its capacity, a 
confinement by invisible walls. Or, to express the phe- 
nomenon in another way, the heat expanding the air 
makes it an absorbent of water, so that the flame has 
an embodiment of vapour, both the embodiment and 
its confines becoming invisible ; and this expansion 
goes on until the tension reaches its limit of capacity, 
when at a critical moment there is the explosion and 
precipitation — the descendent ministration. We have 
here a prophecy of the latency and storage of energy 
in physiological capacity, as when the flaming desire 
shapes the mouth of an animal, expanding it inwardly 
into a stomach as a receptacle for food, and into the 
lungs as a receptacle for air. As these organic ca- 
pacities are deepened inwardly, representing in their 
sphering and involution and convolution the syn- 
thetic action of cosmic envelopment from the begin- 
ning, the desire which has thus, shaped itself by intus- 
susception, expressing its postulation, is outwardly a 
flame of increase, ascending also while it is crescent 
until it reaches the culminant point of its physiologi- 
cal term, where it quickens and flowers and falls. 
Water, when by the dissipation of its latent heat it 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 109 

reaches a certain critical point, suddenly quickens, and, 
instead of contracting, expands into its florescence of 
crystallisation, here again foreshadowing that epoch of 
organic development which determines generational 
succession, where the flame of increase becomes for 
it own organism a consuming flame of sacrifice, falling 
to rise again in another but consubstantial incarnation. 
We shall consider this point more at length when we 
come to treat in greater particularity the ascent and 
descent of life. We wish here only to draw attention 
to the fact that while increase is so conspicuous in 
organic existence, death is equally conspicuous, and 
is thus emphasised at the very point where nutrition 
is arrested and transformed into a genetic process. 

Death, which invisibly is Love — the attraction of grav- 
itation in the spiritual as in the physical world, bind- 
ing all spirits to the Father of Spirits, as all planets to 
their suns, and bringing all prodigals home — is also born 
of Love, when it visibly and conspicuously appears as 
a specialisation, in connection with the procession of 
generations in the organic kingdom. 



XXVIII 

Resuming the suggestions derived from a study of 
organic specialisation, we find that they contradict cer- 
tain propositions which are accepted as axiomatic 
truths in the realm of physical science ; or, 

r J Instability of 

rather, they introduce opposite propositions Scientific 
essential to a full comprehension of Nat- 
ure, of which science professes to give but one side. 



no A STUDY OF DEATH 

I. Science, dealing only with structure and function, 
lays stress upon evolution. A philosophic view of Life 
as transcending structure, as creative, brings into prom- 
inence the opposite truth of Involution. In a single 
passage of his Synthetic Philosophy, Herbert Spen- 
cer admits that this philosophy would be more truly 
indicated by the term Involution ; * but generally fa s 
consideration of nature ignores not only creation but 
Life itself, and is confined to sequences so stated as to 
imply the evolution of even' new form of existence 
from its antecedent. In reality, the term evolution is 
properly applicable only to the processes of expendi- 
ture, ignoring the original tension. It is as if we were 
to consider a watch wholly with reference to its func- 
tion as a time -keeper — an office which it performs 
through the relaxation of the tension of its spring — 
giving no adequate consideration to the tension itself, 
because our attention is fixed upon the action of the 
escapement as more immediately associated with the 
use or function of the machine. The scientific man 
does not ignore latent potency, about which, indeed, 
he has much to say. He will show us that the poten- 
tial energy of the sun is greatest when its distance from 
the earth is greatest, and when, therefore, the kinetic, 
or patent, energy between the earth and the sun is 
least; but it is energy as kinetic, as manifest motion, 
that comes within the scope of his measurement, and 
whose laws he can formulate ; the potential energy. : 
the other hand, he does not ignore, but simply assumes 
as the X, or unknown and indeterminable element in 

First Principles* p. 268. 



THE DIVIDED LINING in 

his computation, treating it as wholly divorced from 
creative life, since his proper business is with motion, 
not with creation. 

II. The axiom that motion is always in the lines of 
least resistance, while it is true of motion as function- 
ing, is not true of the lifting power of life which gives 
tension. Of motion before it moves, if we may be al- 
lowed the use of such an expression, the opposite prop- 
osition is true — namely, that it seeks difficulty. Life 
as creative, as genetic, as in its specialisation a series 
of transformations, withdraws from the facility of habit, 
of a descending motion, for new involution. More- 
over, this tendency of life toward difficulty rather than 
toward facility is illustrated in the continuation of the 
same species through the procession of new genera- 
tions. 

III. Modern scientific views, as generally accepted, 
lay undue stress upon the struggle for existence as a 
competition between species and between individuals 
of the same species. The result of this conflict is ex- 
pressed in the familiar phrase, " The survival of the 
fittest/' Since structure itself is for stability and con- 
servation, within the limitations imposed by life itself 
(/. <?., by the special form of life), it is true that, other 
things being equal, the structure which is best adapted 
to its environment will have the greatest stability. There 
is travail in all forms of life, the struggle for a foothold, 
the competition for vantage-ground. As has been al- 
ready remarked, life seeks difficulty, and the progress 
of specialisation involves at every stage of increasing 
complexity greater difficulty and more frequent and 
varied risk. An exceptionally fortunate environment 



ii2 A STUDY OF DEATH 

leads more often to degeneration than to the promo- 
tion of fitness. The suppleness of the pursuer is not 
more remarkable than that which is developed in the 
game pursued. Taking the widest range of observa- 
tion, we do not find that either safety or ease is an ul- 
timate objective aim in Nature ; she emphasises dis- 
continuity rather than continuity, revival rather than 
survival, running toward death in her progression, 
burning all bridges behind her as she advances. In the 
largest view, stability is an illusion, uniformity a dis- 
guise, the persistence of type not an eternal concern. 
Life, comprehending all involvements and the solici- 
tudes pertaining to these, has itself no solicitude, and, 
because it is esentially resurrection, it glorifies death. 

The term survival is merely relative, and the conflict 
for survival is a part of the universal harmony which, 
in the partial vision, it seems to contradict. When we 
consider that organic existence is possible only because 
of a descending ministration from the beginning of a 
cosmic order, and that it is sustained only through the 
continuance of this ministration still further expanded 
in the relations between the various species of organ- 
isms, and in the succession of generations, we compre- 
hend that sacrifice is as conspicuous in the natural 
world as is demand, that there is no cycle of existence 
in which altruism is not as fully illustrated as individu- 
ation, interdependence as independence — this illustra- 
tion becoming more luminous with the progression of 
organic life. 

Science in its specialisation deals with matter as 
habit-taking. As morphology it considers the habit as 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 113 

one of structural formation. Considering the habit as 
one of functional activity, it formulates the laws of this 
activity which in the organic world are called the laws 
of physiology. In either case the habit is an investi- 
ture, and as an outward visible manifestation hides the 
principle of its own Becoming. The creative life thus 
veiled must forever remain a mystery. Looking toward 
the beginnings, seeing in every moment a renascence, 
we find the veiling a revealing. There is even thus an 
illusion, but the veil is at least transparent. But in the 
study of an order we regard mainly the meanings of ex- 
istence with reference to outward ends ; we follow the 
stream away from its fountain ; we are lost in these di- 
vergent paths, and what we see of life appears to con- 
tradict the essential quality of life. Science in its very 
modesty, in the recognition of its limitations, tends to 
agnosticism. What at first was inevitably an illusion 
becomes a delusion. The transcendency of life is not 
apparent in the confinement of closed circuits, and its 
veil is no longer a transparency, but an obscuration. 
What began in modesty may thus end in inflexible cer- 
titudes. 

The habit of life has been truly and patiently fol- 
lowed into its most intricate folds, but the scientific 
prodigal has gone into the far country with his particu- 
lar share of the Father's divided living ; and to him, 
with his face turned that way, the order of things which 
is the subject of his close scrutiny is seen true, but in 
those aspects which contradict its essential truth. The 
propositions which he makes concerning this order of 
things, such propositions as those we have been con- 
sidering, are verified by all the facts within his range 



ii4 A STUDY OF DEATH 

of observation. He does not belie the order, but he 
fails to see that every order, in its visible aspects, is in 
planetary contradiction to its central sun. It is not in- 
deed necessary that he should fail of this recognition . 
he has only to transcend the limitations of the partial 
view, by which his consideration is confined to a study 
of structure and function wholly with reference to en- 
vironment, to see that the truths of this relation are the 
disguises rather than the interpretations of life. Mor- 
phology then becomes the science of creative trans- 
formations, wherein, as also in all functioning, it is not 
the environment which determines life, but life which 
makes its demand upon the environment. The old 
propositions will be maintained — expressing the visible 
habit of inorganic and organic existence in terms the 
most convenient and exact for the purposes of science 
— but they will yield to their opposites, confessing the 
truth of which they in their rigid outlines are denials . 
having indeed that reaction which belongs to life itself. 
whereby all apparently fixed and inflexible certitudes 
and stable embodiments dissolve into the unseen and 
indefinable mystery from which they sprang. All mat- 
ter, in all its forms, has this solvency and release. 



XXIX 

The cosmic desire and expectation from the begin- 
ning reaches forward to incarnation. This in itself 

is an intimation of some special glory COn- 
Incarnation. . . . n . _ 

summated in the flesh — the last and most 
exquisite product of terrestrial culture. Whatever of 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 115 

descent there may seem to have been from the ethereal 
estate of nebulous flame to that of the mute insensate 
crust of the earth, we cannot but regard the progres- 
sion of cell-life as an ascension, as if from the cinders 
of extinguished fires some new flame had arisen more 
nearly imaging the flame of the Spirit, since it had 
breath, and in many ways witnessing that Spirit as no 
star could do, nor the mightiest motion of the wind or 
sea. This flame, which breathes in the vegetable as one 
breathes in sleep, and which even there is aspirant, many- 
colored and fragrant, and a flame of increase, in the ani- 
mal awakes, and besides exhibiting a greater variety of 
color and more wonderful fertility than in plant-life, has 
will and sensibility. In animate life what marvellous 
ascension — from the worm to the insect, from the creep- 
ing reptile to the hot-blooded bird which encloses, 
possesses, and commands the element upon which it 
depends, more buoyant than that which supports it, 
seeming to be an embodiment at once of flame and air, 
expressing heaven and echoing the heaven-song ! The 
animal seems to have won a kind of independence of 
the earth, a show of separateness emphasised by its 
power of voluntary motion. Its complex organism is a 
deeper involvement than is apparent in less advanced 
forms, and yet it seems to be the most perfect visible 
revelation of the essential quality of life, as if in its 
breathing and pulsation, in its spontaneity of motion 
and feeling, and in its expansion and inhibition, it were 
the living representation of that primordial manifesta- 
tion which science strives to apprehend in its study of 
the original constitution of matter. Since it is the visi- 
ble realisation of the cosmic desire, therefore desire as 



i.i6 A STUDY OF DEATH 

manifested in its activities and impulses naturally 
seems to us the very image of the divine yearning in 
creation from the beginning. So, regarding the most 
perfect fleshly embodiment, we speak of it as "the 
human form divine"; having reached the finest net- 
work of imprisonment, we seem at the same time to 
have reached a critical moment of emancipation, as if 
in man — the extreme complication of finitude and the 
most fallible of all creatures, considered simply as an 
animal and without regard to his peculiar psychical de- 
velopment — life for the first time assumed an erect 
position and a divine gait. Thus always men have 
imagined the divine after the human pattern ; it is an 
inevitable idealism, and if it be the greatest of illusions, 
it is one luminous with all the light there is for us in 
the present order of things. 

Nevertheless it is not an illusion in which the human 
spirit finds rest; and though we can imagine no more 
glorious forms for heavenly inhabitants, and St. John 
in his Apocalypse admitted even the lower animals as 
participants in the celestial ritual, yet is there the feel- 
ing of spiritual revulsion from the flesh as from the 
world itself, so strongly expressed by St. Paul in his 
use of the term carnal and in his assertion that " flesh 
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven." 
The finest cosmic texture which we know — the most 
beautiful garment we see God by that issues from the 
loom of time — is turned from as if it were also the 
grossest. In it is stored all the sweetness of earthly 
existence, a warmth and influence more magical than 
is intimated in the forces disclosed in the chemist's 
laboratory ; yet is it a glory that must pass, and in no 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 117 

dissolution is there corruption more repellent, not even 
in the miasma of vegetable decomposition. But it is 
repented of before its divestiture in that new involu- 
tion of life — that psychical synthesis which is dis- 
tinctive of human destiny. 



XXX 

Following the line of thought thus far taken, we may 
not regard the human species as evolved from any 
other ; and it is conceded by some of the most eminent 
evolutionists that there is not the slightest evidence of 
such a derivation nor any ground for its hypothetical 
postulation. 

Life has no beginning or end, save as it is always 
beginning and always ending. Man, before his ap- 
pearance as a distinct species in the specialisation of 
cell life, was not excluded from the series of trans- 
formations looking forward to his incarna- _. . . 

Distinctive 

tion. In all specialisations he w r as a distinct Human Spe- 

t . ,,. r , . ,. , -,., cialisation. 

species, his royal line of kinship being, like 
that of Melchisedec, without beginning or end of 
days. That which he is now, in comparative physi- 
ology, is typical of his relative position from the be- 
ginning in all cosmic manifestation — a position which 
we can no more represent to ourselves in any definite 
conception than we can forecast what it will be in any 
future existence. 

Man was not first an animal and afterward man. 
In the earliest stages of his development his animality 
suffered a kind of indignity from the psychical charac- 



n8 A STUDY OF DEATH 

teristics which ultimately were to give him supremacy, 
so that among animals he was at a disadvantage, lack- 
ing somewhat of that infallible knowledge which be- 
longed to their instinct, and appearing less competent 
physically than many other species for the conflict 
with external conditions. A rational intelligence, such 
as distinguishes the man of to-day, transferred to that 
period, would have regarded the human species as 
ignominiously defective, and at a fatal disadvantage 
even as compared with the apes, from some variety of 
which he is thought to have descended ; every con- 
spicuous difference from these, including his want of a 
tail, would have seemed to emphasise his inferiority. 
To such an intelligence the law of the survival of the 
fittest would have seemed to put the human weakling 
hors de combat. Thus impossible is it logically to an- 
ticipate the creative transformations of life! 

In the case presented, the transformation had al- 
ready been effected, though its glorious issues were 
hidden beneath the masque of apparently hopeless 
weakness and ineptitude. 

The human infant in gestation is seen to resemble, 
at various stages, animals of inferior species, as if 
recapitulating its own association with the progressive 
specialisation of animal life from the protozoan upward ; 
but as we know that the infant is, at every one of 
these stages, human, proceeding toward a distinctive 
destiny heralded for it from its germination, so it is 
not unreasonable to presume that the progression thus 
represented was itself charged with the same distinctive 
destiny. Man as a protozoan was man, distinguished 
from all other protozoans, having that likeness to them 



THE DIVIDED LINING 119 

which the human germ has to the germs of all other 
animals, one of appearance only. 

We have been considering the illusions arising from 
specialisation, from the progressive involution of life, 
and increasing with the complexity of organisation ; but 
the ever more and more manifold veiling of life, cer- 
tainly in the organic kingdom, is for us a progressive 
revelation, while the visible appearance of the simplest 
forms of existence is of all appearances the most de- 
lusive, a blind masque, insinuating identity and sterile 
unity, and confounding all diverse destinies. 



XXXI 

Humanity is in its specialisation inseparable from 
the specialisation of Will and Reason. We here touch 
the pivotal point of a new world. All divergent rays 
are here concentrated and reflected \ and it is thus 
that the human incarnation becomes the 
express image of God. From the long night 
of time emerges the Logos become flesh, whose de- 
sire for incarnation has dominated the cosmic pro- 
cession, making the universe the complement of him- 
self. All other embodiment was the adumbration and 
expectation of his appearance. How long he was 
withheld as the special nursling of Elohim, or with 
what fiery baptism he was tempered in that brooding 
infancy which we call Eden, we know not. We know 
him only from the moment of his flight from Paradise, 
when began for him the cycle of wandering which had 
been foretokened in the movement of all worlds. Per- 



120 A STUDY OF DEATH 

chance, if he might have turned and fallen upon the 
flaming sword, there might have remained for him for- 
ever the level world of innocence and simplicity ; but 
as easily might the Earth have repudiated her planetary 
destiny and have fallen into the sun. 

That which we call the fall of man was in all primi- 
tive legends represented as his levitation rather, or aspi- 
ration, his entrance upon his proper destiny, and was 
associated directly with the development of his rational 
or discursive intelligence. He partook of the fruit of 
the tree of knowledge — that knowledge which dis- 
tinguishes between good and evil. The story is one 
that shifts its shape and incidents and meaning accord- 
ing to the human mood. In the Promethean legend it 
is not the fall but the betterment of man that is inti- 
mated. The Titan (belonging to the Earth dynasty, 
which is in alliance with the human race against the 
jealous Olympian gods) steals fire from the hostile 
heaven for the benefit of man, who is thus enabled to 
start upon his career of progress. In the Hebrew 
legend there is a hint of Titanic help in the advice of 
the serpent and a suggestion of jealous alarm on the 
part of the Elohim who send in haste the cherubim to 
guard the tree of Life. The first use of clothing is also 
indicated, as the beginning of man's larger investiture. 
But the time when the legend took its final shape was 
evidently one of reaction against the artificial condi- 
tions of civilised life — one of weariness and dissatisfac- 
tion w r ith " all the labor of man under the sun." At 
such a time man would seem to have lost some higher 
estate through vain curiosity and overweening pride, 
and to have eaten fruit, for his own sake wisely forbid- 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 121 

den, when he surrendered instinct for errant and falli- 
ble reason and safe simplicity for the innumerable perils 
of a haughty venture. 

XXXII 

But it was his destiny, and the very essence of it 
was its psychical character. To all other animals 
choice could have no rational meaning, since in their 
selection the alternative is instinctively re- . . 

J A Singular 

jected. All animal consciousness is doubt- Psychical 
less in kind the same as the human, and e * tmy - 
there is in it an adumbration of reason, having, how- 
ever, no properly rational field or career, as in the 
case of man. But man, as at the same time mastering 
all other animality, and repenting himself of his own, 
has a psychical nature wholly unique. The lion, his 
embodiment having been perfected, has no field of oper- 
ation outside of his bodily functions. The corporeal 
perfection of a man, on the other hand, is an utter 
blank, from which no positive suggestion can be de- 
rived as to his peculiar terrestrial destiny ; as blank as 
was the Earth in her merely structural perfection as to 
any suggestion of the flora and fauna of which she was 
to become mother and nurse. 

One of the most interesting studies in natural science 
is the consideration of the transformation which vege- 
table and animal life have wrought in the earth : as in 
the restoration by bacteria to the soil of elements 
drawn from it and converted into animal tissue ; in the 
culture of the soil by earth-worms ; in the erosion of 
stones by lichens ; in the storage of sunbeams by vege- 



122 A STUDY OF DEATH 

tables in coal deposits j and in the building up of con- 
tinents by lowly creatures living in shells, whose work 
is completed by coral germs. 3 * But the terrestrial trans- 
formation wrought by man is much more remarkable, 
because it is effected through an arbitrary selection 
and adjustment, which, though in some ways fortu- 
nately inapplicable, is, in others, almost limitless. He 
cannot rival the earth-worm's ploughing, but he can 
make a garden of the desert, and reduce to temperate 
order the riotous wilderness. More rapidly than the 
lichens he reduces the rocks to dust. His destruction 
of certain species of animals and his domestication 
and improvement of others : his artificial modification 
of plants and fruits ■ and his diversion of water- 
courses, have changed the outward appearance of the 
globe. His temples and pyramids, his cities and towns 
and hamlets upon the land and his fleets upon the sea 
have humanised every landscape ; and even the mis- 
chief resulting from his wasteful destruction of forests 
and the blotches he has made upon the bright face of 
Nature are evidences of his masterful power to impress 
his mark upon the world. These are but the visible 
signs of his psychical supremacy — such as would be 
disclosed to the casual regard, and do not begin to tell 
the story of this new universe of man and mind. A 
visitor from some other planet who had no experience 
of a similar development would find in these obvious 
phenomena no adequate indication of their own mean- 
ing; and a close scrutiny of details, disclosing temples, 

1 See The Study of Animal Life, by J. Arthur Thompson, pp, 
21-26. 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 123 

the edifices for varied social uses, the industrial ma- 
chinery, the libraries and art galleries, the equipment of 
museums and scientific laboratories, the insignia of po- 
litical and military functions, the properties of diverse 
amusements, and the paraphernalia of domestic econ- 
omies, would bring into the view of such a stranger a 
system of symbols requiring the most elaborate in- 
struction for their comprehension, which would be the 
revelation not only of what man has done for the earth, 
but also of the uses he has made of matter and force 
for purely human ends. A still closer study, even if it 
were confined to the single department of literature, 
would lay open the vista of human history and reveal 
the marvellous imaginations and speculations of indi- 
vidual poets and philosophers, showing man as the 
thinker and interpreter as well as the doer. In this 
view the human, or what is the same thing, the psychi- 
cal, destiny transcends all earthly contacts and material 
uses rising to the concerns of an invisible world, to so- 
licitudes and aspirations which overleap the physical 
limitations of existence. 

Like a celestial firmament above the earthly is this 
new realm of Thought, whose tension is broken in the 
precipitate of speech — the Word from the beginning 
ultimately expressed in the articulate word. The rhyth- 
mic harmony of the animate, the incarnate, ascends 
into overtones of psychical harmony. Here is a new 
involution, a fresh embodiment — an adumbration, at 
least, of what St. Paul calls a " spiritual body." The 
tension here is a mystical unfathomable storage of po- 
tential energy, next immediately to the quick deaths of 
the brain, but for it less directly all the world dies ; it 



124 A STUDY OF DEATH 

is an ascension for which all the waves of cosmic life 
forever rise and fall. 

The desire which has shaped and informed macro- 
cosm and microcosm, ever sphering itself anew, and 
entering upon new tropes in its action and reaction, 
passing from order to order, each wonderfully diversi- 
fied and co-ordinated, becomes now the ensphered 
rational Will. Every successive stage of the progres- 
sion up to this point had involved additional suspense, 
more complex limitation, increased temperament, until 
in the starved deeps of ocean and upon the barren crust 
of earth the cell appeared. Extreme limitation, compen- 
sation, balanced resistances, gave organic life its op- 
portunity; and in the development of this life that 
balance became more conspicuous, the physiological 
functions of the more complex organisms having a 
dualistic or divided action, as in respiration and circu- 
lation, and the interaction between the vegetable and 
animal kingdom maintaining a contrapuntal harmony. 
It was ever a more delicate poise of equilibration 
until, in psychical action, it became a deliberate vo- 
lition in the subtle temperament of consciousness. 
What range of suspense from that of a planet like Sat- 
urn, which in the poet's fancy 

"Sleeps on his luminous ring," 

to that of the spirit's contemplation ! Earth has her 
summer when she is at her greatest distance from the 
sun, latency and ascension being greatest when the 
patent energy is least, or when it is most in poise. So 
man, upon creation's outermost rim, has his psychical 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 125 

ascension, his will, though under the extremest limi- 
tation, being the express image of the divine. 

In the contradiction between man's position, as the 
most helpless and fallible of all creatures, and his 
destiny as the son of God, we confront the human 
comedy, wherein the emphasis of time has its intensest 
exaggeration, and the eternal familiarity its deepest 
meaning. 

XXXIII 

In the human world the outer worldliness is re- 
peated and outdone, having an infinite projection. 
The multiplicity and variety of the physical universe 
sink into insignificance beside this new "series of in- 
volvements and complications. " The Father 
worketh hitherto," and now man works, build- scio ^ s veil- 
ing his superstructure above the divine foun- in s and Dis ' 

. . cernment. 

dation. Has God hidden Himself behind the 
veils of His world? Man has multiplied these veils, 
whereby he has also hidden from himself his own es- 
sential self. He comes into a world of hidden fires 
and broken lights, a world of interrupted currents and 
of apparent stabilities, rigid to the point of frangibility ; 
and this broken world he still further breaks ; his mind 
is a prism, and what to his vision is already partial 
becomes more discrete in his analysis, and most artic- 
ulate in his speech. 

In the specialised consciousness nothing begins 
save by interruption or termination. Definition is by 
boundaries, by the lines of cleavage in the brokenness 
of things in time and space, so that judgment is dis- 



:-o A STUDY OF DEATH 

cerament. We .vould have no definite conception of 
light and no name for it but for its interruption, or of 
any current save as it is broken. Whatever elements 
there may be in the universe, about us or within us, 
that are not thus discurrent cannot enter into the dis- 
course of our reason. Dissociation seems primary, 
and our association is of the dissociated elements, co- 
ordination being the reflex of radiant diversification. 
It is true that our first sensibility seems to hold all 
things in a kind of confusion, but the progress of 
intelligent perception is through discrimination and 
comparison. 

XXXIV 

The psychical, like every other order, is planetary. 
Not only are all other systems therein reflected and 
recognized, but it is itself a distinctively human system 
of thought and volition thrown off and dissociated from 
the solar man, showing in the earliest period of its 

development that fluidity and instability 
^w MmT wmcn characterises the primitive planet, and 

then gradually hiding its fires, losing its 
clairvoyant transparency in opacity, and shaping its 
firmaments. We have at last the superficial planetary 
man, seeming to himself to have a motion wholly his 
own ; and this illusion is fortified by the fact that in 
his sky (which thus differs from all other planetary 
skies) the central sun is never seen. There is no 
blindness, no opacity, like that of the extremely spe- 
cialised planetary consciousness, wherein knowledge 
becomes wholly relative, objective, partial, and limited 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 127 

to the visible course of things — to the closed circuits 
of physical and mental phenomena. In its extreme 
rationalism it excludes the miracle and becomes en- 
tangled in the meshes of its own web, vainly attempt- 
ing the solution of problems which are of its own 
making, since they arise only within the network of 
relation, association, and causation, whereby, as by the 
links of an endless chain, it is imprisoned. The 
strangest feature of this illusion is that the confine- 
ment is known as liberation ; and such it truly is — 
the planetary liberty of arbitrary selection, of choice. 
Here, too, is maintained the likeness of the psychical 
to the physical planetary system, in that the order 
seems to deny its central principle : instinct is hidden 
under arbitrary determination, the Son -becomes the 
Pupil, experimenting on his own account and learning 
only by failure ; the fountain is lost in the stream, and 
essential attributes are disguised in the outward and 
structural integrity. 

" God hath so set the world in the heart of man," 
saith the Preacher, " that man knoweth not what He 
hath been doing from the beginning even unto the 
end." 

XXXV 

Behold how the illusions thicken and multiply in 
this world which includes the phenomena of conscious 
will and intelligence. Life, in these outer 
courts of its temple, seems to deny its essen- ^> xhical 

r J Illusions. 

tial attributes. In itself spontaneous, direct, 
immediate, it becomes the opposite of all these in a 



128 A STUDY OF DEATH 

secondary nature, where action and knowledge seem ar- 
bitrary, where they are relative, through means toward 
ends, all operation proceeding by indirection. Con- 
sider the contradiction involved in the necessity of 
making acquaintance in this casual and indirect way, 
as in a game of hide-and-seek, with beings we have al- 
ways known. In our relations to other existence, what 
incongruity : that we should depend upon it for suste- 
nance; that we should enter into alliance with it for 
our protection and into apparent conflict with it for 
very standing room ! Life only is potent : whence, 
then, this guise of helplessness, this stress of concern 
as to means of life, as to provision for safety against 
impending perils ? What strange mansion is this, 
against whose portals beat eagerly for entrance all 
human souls ; and of those finding entrance how ques- 
tionable their tenure ! From the open sea what winds 
and currents drive against the reefs and rocks of a 
coast that is at once hospitable and forbidding, invit- 
ing to the shelter of secure havens, drawing also to 
shallows and shipwreck, the merest triviality dividing 
safety from destruction ! And this human drift, which 
is the latest, with what reckless violence does it fling 
itself against the indurations of time, seeking a foothold, 
where with patient endurance it fortifies its position, 
cheerfully trying conclusions with things in this rude 
field of experimentation and adventure ! 

The greatest of all illusions dominating the mind of 
man in the world of appearances is that of his outward 
selfhood, eclipsing his inmost and essential personality. 
It is a selfhood which seems to him a complete estate, 
which he calls the Ego. He ignores the will and in- 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 129 

telligence which have fashioned and informed his mem- 
bers, becoming at last sensibility and volition incar- 
nate ; he ignores these as if they were not properly his 
own, and calls his only the mind he has made, and the 
w T ill which he has formed and which he calls his char- 
acter — just as he calls his only those corporeal motions 
which arise from his conscious volition. 

What we thus term illusions are but the habits where- 
with we clothe ourselves, the masques and varied cos- 
tumes which we wear in the Comedy — the veils of the 
transformation-scene. What is within ? What is that 
Fire which never flames but is the ground of all flame ? 
What is that Light which is unbroken and knows no 
shadow ? What is that which itself flows not but is in 
the fountain that by which the fountain rise's and falls ? 
What is that which is not born and never dies but is 
the principle of nascence and destruction ? We know 
not so as to name, and yet it is really all we know, the 
ground of all our knowledge. It can be stalled in no 
predicament. The Pantheist, Monist, and Dualist utter 
their names and definitions in the face of the Unutter- 
able. To say that beneath all that is disclosed in our 
consciousness is the One Will and Intelligence — the 
indivisible soul of the Universe — is an assertion de- 
rived from our conception of a finite individuality. In 
the very essence of Life is that which gives the mean- 
ing to our terms One and Many, but not to the one 
apart from the other. Any predication which is not 
the absolute negation of all predicament brings us back 
into the outer courts of the temple — -into our ever- 
changing habit and habitation — into the pulsation of 
embodiment. We are clothed upon not with immor- 
9 



13° A STUDY OF DEATH 

tality but with mortality ; habit itself, whether of the 
flesh or of the spirit, being, like memory, the resurgence 
of a falling wave. As we have said before, our old 
Nurse from the beginning is both Lethe and Levana. 

Man, more than any other creature, is by his desire 
and his destiny (which are one) thrust into exile, 
thrown upon his own venture, absorbed in his volun- 
tary endeavor. His is not the blind preoccupation of 
instinct, but a wakeful, solicitous intention, engaging 
every faculty of his complex nature. For a time in the 
infancy of the race he leans to the earth in a natural 
piety and humility, worshipping Demeter, and looking 
for help to the benignant powers of darkness. But 
how quickly his old nurse shows herself as Levana 
rather than Lethe ! From the first, indeed, the urgency 
of his peculiar destiny is apparent, driving him into the 
far-country, and he stands face to face with his limita- 
tions — peculiar limitations upon which only human life 
enters, and which are at once the source of his weak- 
ness and his strength. By his very individuation he 
is lost, and seems like one disinherited and at odds 
with a rude, alien, and resistant world that tempts and 
bewilders him. Reduced to a state of pupilage he 
must strive for all he would have or know, only those 
doors opening to him at which he knocks. From his 
sensible contacts with the world he builds up mind and 
experience, faltering into his intelligence. His walking 
is a series of falls, and he stumbles into all his progres- 
sion. Ignorance and fallibility seem to be the very 
ground of his curiosity and aspiration. Disturbance 
becomes stimulation, resistance the measure of his 
strength ; that which is in the way becomes the way. 



THE DIVIDED LIVING 131 

These are the very conditions of that destiny which be- 
gins in revulsion from animal instinct, a revolt involv- 
ing shame and humiliation and defeat, a sense, also, of 
conflict with Nature — with her life and her death — 
but from these conditions arise the glory of the human 
world. 

The solar man — the centre of this planetary psychi- 
cal system — though hidden, is still the potential energy 
vitalising and illuminating the specialised individual 
will and reason and the collective social order which is 
the result of human effort and intelligence. This latent 
energy shines with native light through the rude dawn 
of social culture ; an informing divination and inspira- 
tion ; the initiation of mystical rites, with choral song 
and dance • the spring of buoyant adventure and hero- 
ism ; the tender inward grace of faltering beginnings ; 
the plenitude of faith, making up for inexpertness and 
lack of outward vantage. Pessimism lies at the end of 
things, waiting upon facility, as the sense of vanity at- 
tends accomplishment. 

As blind feeling, hidden beneath the specialisation 
of sensibility in vision and hearing, remains the living 
ground of the beautiful perspective developed, so that 
native divination which is buried beneath the construc- 
tions of the human understanding remains the living 
ground of the vast and varied rational perspective, be- 
ing indeed the invisible and latent power which lifts 
man into a realm w T hose interests range in ever-widen- 
ing circles from the hearth-stone to the remotest star. 
But it is the hiding of this power that accentuates the 
human perspective and makes possible certain peculiar 
conceits in the human consciousness — such as have 



132 A STUDY OF DEATH 

been already instanced as illusions, all emphasising the 
apparent independence of that outward integrity which 
is built up by the individual and collective will, and 
which, as a whole, constitutes what we call the moral 
order. 



CHAPTER II 

THE MORAL ORDER 



The term moral is derived from the Latin word mos, 
meaning custom, and ethical, from a Greek word (eOoq) 
having a similar meaning. Primarily these terms sug- 
gest w r ont, inclination that has become habit- 
ual, a spontaneous disposition. This sponta- jS^^m 
neity is apparent in the beginnings of a social 
order and in the first stages of aesthetic development. 
Human actions, like the operations of Nature, seem to 
fall into order of themselves, and with reference to some 
unseen centre of harmony. Choice, instead of being an 
arbitrary action of the will, is rather a dilection, ac- 
cordant to the invisible harmony, a natural selection in 
the subjective sense of the term, a divine motion and 
passion, having also natural inhibition or restraint, cor- 
responding to the modulation and temperament of the 
cosmic order. Nothing in the human world is vitalised 
save by the divine action and passion, and the vitality 
is not an endowment, it is genetic. In this view the 
problem concerning Free-will could not occur. We do 
not question whether the flower turns to the sun or the 
sun turns the flower, when these are seen not as two 
motions but as parts of one. 



134 A STUDY OF DEATH 



II 



In the complex specialisation of the moral order this 
spontaneity is more and more hidden and apparently 

contradicted in the prominence given to arbi- 
1: v ' J -' v ;- r:; trarv selection. In the Latin word mos 

there is the suggestion of measure (from the 
old root ma), so that one comes to say of his habitual 
conduct that it is not only his wont, but his rule : and 
in the social evolution the individual comes under a 
rule not his own, to which both his inclination and his 
reason may be subjected. The tendency is to substi- 
tute for nexible principle the inflexible rule. As the in- 
dividual artificer works with plummet and level and rule 
and according to some rational plan, so does society 
collectively seem to build up its institutions in con- 
formity to some outward standard and according to 
reason. Whatever is necessary to maintain the tone, 
health, and vigor of an organisation (a family, a tribe, a 
nation, or a confederacy of nations) pertains to its 
morale and determines moral obligations, and these ob- 
ligations will be rigorous as against whatever tends to 
disintegration. Life will be more and more hidden for 
the gain of structural strength, until in the most com- 
plex of civilisations it will seem to be buried under its 
mechanical framework. In a merely superficial view 
the entire moral order seems to depend upon arbitrary 
selection, to be the result of experimentation, the sum 
of which we call experience. If we were confined to 
this view, absolute pessimism would be the only goal 
of our philosophy. Considering the moral order merely 



THE MORAL ORDER 135 

for what it outwardly seems to be, as summed up in 
man's accomplishment and what he aims to accomplish, 
our vision of the human prodigal would end in utter 
nakedness and inanition, just as any theory of the cos- 
mic order confined to the study of structure and func- 
tion would lead us finally to the view of an intensely 
cold and sterile space filled with dead worlds. 



Ill 

Seen only as shut into the field of his exile — of his 
conscious plans and efforts — the weakness of man is 
conspicuous, and his shame and misery in- 
tolerable • no joys within these limitations Aspects^ 
can balance his pains : the last word of all Hum . an Ex - 

x penence. 

his speech must be Vanity ! Elsewhere in 
the boundless universe there is no such sense of humil- 
iation, as elsewhere there is no such capacity for vacilla- 
tion, misadventure, and defeat. All other cosmic opera- 
tion has its prodigality of a divided living, its error and 
defect, its vagrancy and avoidance of perfection, its 
swerving from straight lines and from regularity of 
form, but its procedure, however mediate, is sure, with- 
out indirection, never mistaking its course ; and this is 
true also of human corporeal and psychical action not 
under the control of conscious volition. Life outside 
of the field of arbitrary choice knows no outward rule 
or standard ; its order is of sure ordinance, a spon- 
taneous co -ordination, involving no experiments, no 
misfits, and never missing the happiness of harmonious 
adaptation — constituting a world of everlasting loyalty 



136 A STUDY OF DEATH 

and fidelity to the brooding Spirit, which is at every 
point unfalteringly wise and potent. Here there is, 
properly speaking, no experience, no cumulative knowl- 
edge. There is, indeed, variability of habit, discontinu- 
ity, transformation — a series of surprises delighting even 
an all - wise expectation ; but, whatever the habit or 
change of habit, there is thereby no formation of a di- 
vine character or increase of a divine knowledge. The 
Spirit of Life beco?nes the universe, which is always and 
everywhere a fitness as well as a becoming, and as 
much so at the first (if there were a first) as it can 
ever be. 

Human experience, on the other hand, is quite dis- 
tinct from these cosmic phenomena, and, considering 
its scope and its aims, is widely different from that of 
all other animals. But the distinction is not so abso- 
lute in reality as it is in appearance. There seems to 
be a great chasm between a voluntary effort which in a 
brief period accomplishes its purpose and those physi- 
cal operations which for the attainment of a similar end 
would take millions of years. What a vast period of 
time is occupied in the development of a human hand 
or eye ! But the machines invented by man in a single 
century give him a hundred hands, and enlarge a thou- 
sand-fold his scope of vision. In making his engines 
and his telescope, however, he is compelled to avail 
himself of the properties of things, of natural forces 
and laws, and it has taken ages for him to learn these 
uses. He can arbitrarily regulate the speed of his ma- 
chinery and the power of his telescope, but his water- 
wheel is of no advantage apart from the gravitation of 
water, and his telescope is useless apart from his living 



THE MORAL ORDER 137 

eye. He cannot impart life to the products of his arti- 
fice, and such modifications of living things as are the 
result of his deliberate adjustments are really brought 
about by vital processes that in themselves are inde- 
pendent of his will. What he has gained has been ac- 
quired by slow and faltering processes, and as the re- 
sult of innumerable failures. If we regard only the 
ends which he consciously proposes to himself in his 
experimentation, these in themselves are utterly vain, 
having no value save in the living principle from which 
all human aspiration springs, and which reaches its 
true and living issue only as it overleaps his goals, dis- 
closing their unreality — the emptiness of all which we 
call a conclusion and accomplishment. 



IV 

This living principle is hidden — it is the secret dis- 
position of our divine -human destiny, and when, in 
some luminous moment, it shines through all its veils, 
or when, in some flaming moment of transformation, the 
vesture is consumed, then indeed our con- ^. 

Disposition 

scious plans and propositions are disclosed and 
as mere broken fragments, the partial seg- loposi 
ments of a cycle which is completed in a movement 
that escapes observation. This hidden life it is — our 
own very inmost life — which flanks every strongest for- 
tress we can build. 

Now, when our old Nurse Lethe becomes to us 
Levana, putting us away from herself, setting us upon 
our feet and turning our faces toward outward £oals, 



138 A STUDY OF DEATH 

she still attends us, though unseen. She lodges cour- 
age in our hearts to meet the bewilderments of a world 
that at once tempts and betrays ; she assists our fal- 
tering steps, making inert, resistant matter our sup- 
port and our very fears an inspiration, deepening 
our hearts through solicitudes, enlarging our strength 
through travail. She it is who, though taking us often 
back into the merciful oblivion of sleep, yet draws 
about our busy day-dream a curtain, hiding from our 
specialised vision both the fountains and the issues of 
our life, and shutting us into our game of Hide-and- 
seek, to which she gives zest by wonderful surprises, 
showing us at moments of defeat gifts more precious 
than those we have sought and lost. Following our 
blush of shame because of something marred or missed 
is seen upon her countenance a special grace — a favour- 
ing glimpse of the Ideal. She sets us at our looms, 
and though we weave but shreds and shrouds, text- 
ures whereby we are clothed upon with mortality, she 
sometimes gives us glimpses of the other side of the 
web, where it is mystically seen as whole, or at least 
suggests some beautiful inward integrity marvellously 
contrasting with the apparent outside raggedness. The 
emphasis of Time would paralyse our hearts but for her 
quickening of prophetic hope, showing escape where we 
behold only a barrier, and reserving as the largest of all 
her favours that last release, when she sets our feet 
toward the door of our dwelling, which they re-enter not. 
While, therefore, our experience seems to us experi- 
mentation for the most part, so that we have come 
to look upon the present existence as a period of pro- 
bation and even to think of eternity as dependent 



THE MORAL ORDER 139 

upon time, imagining some everlasting mansion pat- 
terned and determined by our shaping of its mere 
scaffolding; while we magnify our exploitation and our 
conscious manipulation of things, laying supreme stress 
upon arbitrary choice and upon human responsibility, 
yet such a view interposes an irrational chasm between 
human existence and the general course of things. It 
is especially a modern view, confirmed by the impres- 
sions derived from an extremely specialised order — in- 
dustrial, political, and ethical — where artifice seems to 
displace creation and the thing made the thing that 
grows ; where formal and lifeless mechanism is most 
conspicuous, and where the ends proposed appear to 
be as far removed as possible from such as lie in the 
line of natural selection. The aggregation of people 
in large cities, the accumulation of wealth, the artificial 
conditions of civilisation, the absorption of so many 
human lives in efforts to secure simple subsistence, the 
magnitude of enterprises undertaken, the mastery over 
natural forces, the devitalisation of industry through 
the extreme division of labour, the secularisation of in- 
stitutions, the tendency toward a social collectivism in 
which the individual and the family shall be subjected 
to a general control, and the supreme confidence of 
society in systems of reform, and in the power of statu- 
tory legislation — all these indicate the predominance 
of arbitrary over natural selection. Free human will 
and human responsibility are transferred from the cir- 
cumference of a specialised order, where properly they 
belong, to its very centre ; they seem to overshadow 
all other factors of progress, and in the moral order 
they claim the entire domain. 



140 A STUDY OF DEATH 



In the absolute sense there is no purely arbitrary 
selection, and what we call free will is so in appear- 
ance only and by virtue of limitation, being 

No Absolute- . .... 

ly Arbitrary the ultimate specialisation or spontaneous 
Selection, yjffl^ j us t as our reason is the ultimate spec- 
ialisation of spontaneous intelligence. Choice seems 
arbitrary because of our consciousness of its most deli- 
cate poise and balance in a world of librations only less 
specialised ; because of its extreme variableness be- 
yond that of any other functioning in the organic realm, 
becoming sometimes even caprice ; because also of its 
fallibility, which is associated with the empirical or ex- 
perimental. 

Human experience is not divorced from human des- 
tiny, but is rather its masque, that which man proposes 
to himself, in the line of his phenomenal progression, 
disguising his secret disposition. All appearance dis- 
guises Reality. There is the Real Will with a hidden 
purpose deeper than any particular intention — a Real 
Reason deeper than is shown in any definite rational 
process. The Cosmos hides the true Logos — that light 
which lighteth every man, and which is the Light of the 
World. In man as in the world it is the genetic or cre- 
ative that is hidden. 

Nothing falls outside of this genetic reality, though 
everything thus seems to fall outside of it in our con- 
scious representation of a world to ourselves. There 
is no power or knowledge separate from it. We say 
that we make something common by communicating it; 



THE MORAL ORDER 141 

in reality it can be communicated only because it is 
common. We call that general which is the result of 
our generalisation, but the ground of generalisation is 
the genetic. There is no familiarity out of the family 
or home. What we see as a divided living is genetically 
the abounding life — the ground of multiplication; what 
seems to us under restraint, in tension within walls visi- 
ble or invisible, is genetically the bounding as it is the 
abounding — the ground of all inhibition ; what we see 
as form is here formative, informing, and transforming, 
and that which we know as order is here undistributed 
harmony. Herein is the eternal life — to know the 
Father and the Son — eternal kinship, eternal familiari- 
ty. Life in this transcendency needs no chart or guide 
or standard ; has no prudence or economy ©r any moral 
virtue ; cares not for any structure or type ; it stands 
for all that falls as for all that rises, for evil as for 
good, for divestiture and destruction as for embodi- 
ment and growth, for mourning and fasting as for a 
festival, for the old as for the new, seeing both as one 
— the reaction in the action, repentance in regeneration. 



VI 

The genetic eternal life is the ground of all action 
and reaction, which are proper thereto in a sense 
wholly indefinable in our specialised con- 
sciousness. No predication we make con- G ^^L Au " 
cerning the action and reaction as seen in 
the visible world — a world of suspense, where begin- 
ning and end are regarded as separate — is applicable 



142 A STUDY OF DEATH 

to the invisible genesis where death and birth (if these 
terms could there be used) are inseparable. Neverthe- 
less the genetic and eternal meanings dominate and 
give significance to all phenomenal existence — consti- 
tuting the bond of kinship which makes the whole uni- 
verse the Father's House, whatever our illusions of 
flight and exile, of freedom and integrity. 

The genetic is revealed even in its veilings, and in 
the illusions of our divided living it has a varied and 
beautiful disclosure — a confession in its very denial. 
In the inorganic world the hiding seems more complete 
because we see that world only on its dying side, in its 
descent and diminution for the ascent of organisms ; 
though even here we see death as genetic, the barren 
becoming fruitful, the desert inflorescent. In the invo- 
lutions of the organic the revelation is clearer and more 
intimate, the abounding creative life showing itself in 
ascension, growth, and procreation, in all forms of in- 
crease signifying its original authority. 

In the physiology of advanced organisms this genetic 
authority is conspicuous, though its source is hidden, 
residing in a system of cells quite distinct from those of 
the general system, and having a sacred inviolability 
and immunity, secure from waste and expenditure in 
ordinary functioning ; an empire far withdrawn from 
the outer courts of the temple of life into its Holy of 
Holies. The nebulous and comparatively unspecialised 
germ plasma dominates the whole embodiment, being 
the source of its motion and passion — the physiological 
symbol of eternal life, of that which was from the be- 
ginning and which is to come. This tenseless potency 
is surrendered only in such germs as come into embodi- 



THE MORAL ORDER 143 

ment, wherein again it is hidden, since of its kingdom 
there is no end. 

In the human world the dominion of this principle 
is supreme. We see it in the primitive worship of an- 
cestors and in the symbolism of all sacred mysteries ; 
it is associated with all human heroism and chivalry as 
with native virtue and piety, with the beautiful in art 
as with the sanctities of home — the one lien which Nat- 
ure has upon man in the most artificial conditions of 
his civilisation. It is not of matter, but of the spirit, 
or, rather, it is of matter because it is of the spirit. 
Man is the incarnation of the spontaneous Logos, where- 
of all else in Nature is only a less specialised mani- 
festation ; and the essential idea of the Logos is genetic 
— it is Sonship. 

We dwell upon this conception of the genetic, as the 
basis of all natural selection, of vital destination, of 
harmonious ordinance, as the Reality beneath all ap- 
pearances of individuation and altruism, of separation, 
conflict, and association, because it impresses upon our 
minds and hearts the sense of a universal homely dis- 
position of things ; also because in any order, and es- 
pecially in the moral, the Appearance is regarded rather 
than the Reality. 

Birth itself is a break with the eternal, and the first 
deliverance of infantile consciousness, separating the 
me from the not-me, is the beginning of a perspective 
of wonderful beauty and variety, pulsing with the life it 
veils, at once an involution and an evolution, a folding 
away of the self and an unfolding of it, and in the 
same movement an assimilation and a differentiation. 
Individuation is by inclusion and at the same time by 



144 A STUDY OF DEATH 

exclusion. In the many-mansionecl house when one 
door is opened another is shut, when a fold of its cur- 
tains is drawn another side of the fold shows a with- 
drawing ; a falling at one point is a rising at the next, 
so that the whole architecture is a succession of living 
waves. It is a Passing Scene — a constant Trope — a 
turning and a re-turning. Every point is the centre of 
repulsion and attraction — one the complement of the 
other, and both together making spheres of matter and 
cycles of motion. In this flowing equation the very 
contradiction of the two sides represents their identity 
— but also their interchangeability. This Protean me- 
tabolism is the outward revelation of the essential con- 
substantiality of all things with each other and of all 
with the Father. The hunger of every desire has its 
satisfaction, partaking of what becomes its own, only 
because that which is appropriated was already its por- 
tion — a part of itself — as God is the portion of every 
creature. Each desire is in the line of its special ac- 
cords, but the largest harmony encloses all these. The 
divided living is a specialisation, but in the eternal 
reality all that the Father hath belongs to the prodigal 
as to the elder brother. The line of a family in genet- 
ic succession is one of special accords — of special at- 
tractions and repulsions — and in this line vital destina- 
tion is pronounced and plainly seen to be inevitable ; 
but in its destiny, and really the largest part thereof, 
is included the dominion and service of the univer- 
sal kinship which it seems to exclude as alien. The 
more particular specialisation in the predilection of pri- 
mogeniture, both as to honors and sacrifices, privi- 
leges and responsibilities, is really an exaltation of the 



THE MORAL ORDER 145 

genetic principle itself, whose glory is summed up in 
the First, Only, and Eternally Begotten. 

The real Personality is a mystery transcending any 
possible mental analysis. The analyses attempted in 
recent psychological speculation have but one result — 
the multiplication of personalities within what is usually 
regarded as the embodiment of one ; and in the monad- 
ological theory the multiplication is extended indefi- 
nitely. Such notional analysis is itself a specialised 
rational process, hiding the real truth, stalling it in the 
numerical predication, and leading to just such irrecon- 
cilable contradictions as result from the consideration 
of a divisible Space or Time. The principle of divisi- 
bility is itself a genetic mystery, which is disguised in 
the mathematical process. We say " apart from," ex- 
pressing distance — in a real apprehension we would 
say " a part of." * Separation, if it be a vital depart- 
ure, is the breaking of a union which still remains one, 
including the fragment. This is not Pantheism, unless 
St. Paul w T as a pantheist, declaring that in God " we 
live and move and have our being." To think of our- 
selves as " without God," and of our wills as other than 
indissoluble from His will, is the falsehood. 

Matter is not acted upon by other matter, as indi- 
cated in the statement of physical laws, or a spirit by 
other spirits : the action, including the reaction, is in 
each but of all. There is no dominion of quantity, no 
majority. The infinitesimal germ balances the universe, 
and, while in its individuation it seems to hermetically 

* The word part has itself the genetic meaning : pars, from 
pario, allied to portio, which has the same root as the Greek lizopov 
(gave), perfect TrsTrpujrai (it is destined). 



146 A STUDY OF DEATH 

seal its integrity, it has infinite endosmosis — an open- 
ness to ail currents ; and though it seems to gather 
where it has not strewn, yet its vital use and posses- 
sion is the appropriation of its own : it is in debt for 
no endowment, save as owing and owning are one. 
There is no fund of potency and wisdom, or of life — 
only an eternal fount of these which we call our Father. 
to Whom our vital relation is not one of accountability. 
Neither is the individual, as a living being, indebted 
to Society. The bond is vital, conferring upon the 
individual no rights and devolving no duties. Rights 
and duties are not pertinent to natural laws, but only 
to conventional regulations and adjustments growing- 
out of the specialisation of social functions. The son 
has no duty to the parent from his sonship. but be- 
cause of his tutelage. We do not associate debt and 
credit or any merit with parental instinct or natural 
piety. The bond is so close and intimate that these 
terms are not adequate to its expression. But the 
period of human infancy is prolonged far beyond the 
limitations of such a state in other animals, and more 
extended in the advanced than in the primitive stages 
of progress, so that the family, though primarily a 
natural institution, involves a care and culture over- 
stepping the bounds of instinct, varying according to 
circumstance and guided by rational motives. This 
special tutelage assumes functions whose exercise has 
an important bearing upon social interests outside of 
the family: it is moral and educational, demanding 
outward rules and standards and requiring obedience 
and conformitv. 



THE MORAL ORDER 147 



VII 



The patriarchate is the similitude of the Father's 
House, and in passing from it to the tribal organisa- 
tion natural vitalism was still maintained. When, in 
more complex grouping and a more special- 
ised social life, a conventional bond took r^^ 1 
the place of the primitive sacrament of kin- 
ship, human progress assumed new aspects ; and in 
our retrospect of this departure it seems like an en- 
trance upon a new world. As in the first development 
of human intelligence the rational is differentiated 
from the instinctive, involving a peculiar weakness and 
also a peculiar strength, so in the beginning- of conven- 
tional institutions this differentiation is more marked, 
and with the weakening of living bonds there is fortifi- 
cation of the social structure. History and the science 
of history deal mainly with this structure — with the 
deliberate human efforts engaged in its elaboration, 
and with the outward conditions affecting the growth 
and decay of social systems. While the thoughtful 
student regards this structure as a living organism, a 
superficial view discloses the mechanism only, which 
has indeed the semblance of an organism, but seems 
independent of the general course of things — a drama 
whose scenes are shifted arbitrarily by a human will that 
has somehow broken loose from the universal harmony 
— a by-play of Destiny rather than its ultimate expres- 
sion. We are apt to review 7 the history of mankind in 
the lights and shadows affecting our conception of the 
present situation, beset by problems of every sort that 



148 A STUDY OF DEATH 

seem to defy solution — a transitional situation the 
issue of which no man can see. Human progress, 
thus regarded, appears to be from the vital to the un- 
vital, from the strength of a flowing life to the brittle- 
ness of mechanical stability, a constantly greater sur- 
render of potential energy for structural completeness. 
The traces of that golden age of humanity, which our 
imagination vaguely locates in some remote past, re- 
treat before our longing backward vision until they are 
lost to view. We assume that at some unhappy epoch 
in the very dawn of history man abandoned a first 
estate of innocence and was himself abandoned, thrown 
upon his own resources of will and reason, and com- 
pelled to win his way upon an earth accursed for his 
sake, through harsh conflicts with a hostile nature and 
with hostile aliens of his own race, and under the over- 
whelming shadow of jealous gods whose angels fiercely 
guarded his forfeit heritage, and who baffled his heaven- 
piercing aspirations with such confusion as befell the 
builders of the Tower of Babel — gods who were wor- 
shipped because of fear and in a perpetual ritual of 
propitiatory sacrifices. We picture to ourselves this 
Marplot of the universe, this Protagonist who by his 
first arbitrary choice involved a world in death and 
woe, as forever after shut into such edifices as his arbi- 
trary choice might erect for his pleasure, protection, 
and use, and in all his ways brought face to face with 
the Death whom by denying he had invoked, and with 
the dread monsters following in Death's train or antici- 
pating his approach. The development of this victim 
of so many pursuers appears to us the result of his 
antagonisms, and especially of his conflict with Death, 



THE MORAL ORDER 149 

whose terrors become the chief inspiration of life, giv- 
ing swiftness and suppleness to his flying limbs, sharp- 
ness to his faculties, and cunning to his intelligence; 
deepening his imagination ; and prompting him to 
build monuments that shall survive his brief exist- 
ence. Even the procession of generations appears to 
be a defiance to the arch-enemy, each one that passes 
smiling in the face of the great Destroyer and pointing 
to its successor. 

Beholding man as thus the arbiter of his own des- 
tiny, scheming, ambitious, and selfish, in all his strug- 
gles seeking and slowly gaining vantage by the sheer 
force of his own will guided by the light of a mind 
built up by experience, and considering the solicitudes 
and apprehensions attending his first rude exploitation 
of a refractory world, wrecked in his own ruin, we fol- 
low with a feeling of mingled pity and admiration his 
ruggedly adventurous career from his first attempts to 
clothe his conscious nakedness until his habit has har- 
dened into a mailed armour covering his infinite vulner- 
ability. While all living things erect and expand their 
structures in apparent defiance of gravitation, and he 
likewise counteracts this force in his upright frame, 
using it and breaking it in his gait, yet in his artificial 
constructions, dealing with inert materials, he must 
build with level and plummet and upon a firm founda- 
tion. In place of the sureness of instinct he must estab- 
lish for himself the certitudes of reason, and in accord- 
ance with these adjust every detail of his individual 
life and of his more elaborate social economies. In his 
reason he must find compensations for its own fallibil- 
ity, the rule for righting himself against his many falls. 



15° A STUDY OF DEATH 

As, according to this view of history, religion is born of 
fear and the love of mastery is nourished by incessant 
antagonism against hostile elements and forces, so the 
shyness, suspicion, and cunning arising from apprehen- 
sion and developed in constant efforts for resistance and 
protection bring one tribe into war with another or 
several tribes into alliance against a common foe; so 
that it is through conflict, through conciliations to 
avoid conflict or to solidify attack or defence, and 
through treaties following the issues of conflict, that 
the larger social groupings are formed. 

In this more complex organisation a new element of 
weakness calls for a new system of fortifications. In 
the single tribe the blood of kindred was the sole 
fountain of law, and morality was hardly distinguished 
from natural piety. Restraints were vital. We see 
from the scriptural account how God is said to have 
treated the first murderer, sending him forth as a wan- 
derer, but setting upon him a seal for his protection — a 
very different procedure from that enjoined by the Mo- 
saic law for the government of the aggregated Hebrew 
tribes. The arbitrarily devised statutes, for the regula- 
tion of peoples acknowledging no living bond of social 
obligation, seem to us to have been wholly arbitrary, 
and we represent to ourselves a deliberately wrought 
political system, with conventional allotment of prop- 
erty, of rights, and of duties, and even the fabrication 
of a secondary conscience. In a word, formal justice, 
regulating every social economy, takes the place of 
the natural, living control ; and the substitute appears 
to us so inherently weak because of its conventional 
character that we inquire how it was reinforced. The 



THE MORAL ORDER 151 

weakness itself, the dire necessity, would have prompted 
to rigorous discipline, to a severe penal code. The very 
frailty of government would have enthroned the gov- 
ernor and hedged him about with divinity. The priest 
would have stood at his side and forged the thunder- 
bolts of heaven for the enforcement of the civil edict. 
The military sacrament, displacing that of kinship, 
would have stood for protection not only against for- 
eign invasion, but against internal revolt. The inflexi- 
ble barriers separating castes would have given soli- 
darity to the social structure. Empires would have 
grown by conquest, securing peace within their borders, 
and fostering the culture of art and science and juris- 
prudence. Thus Rome became the mistress of the 
world, nations seeking alliance with her even more for 
the benefits of her stable dominion than from fear of 
her victorious legions. 

In this benignant atmosphere a sense of mastery 
succeeds to that of weakness, and the poet forecasts a 
new golden age of world-wide peace, stability, and 
equity. The will of man has conquered Fate, and has 
caused to grow in the garden of Experience fruits of 
virtue outrivalling any products of Nature's fairest 
fields. It has especially transcended Nature in bring- 
ing to bloom the thornless rose of Merit — a flower to 
which no instinct may lay claim and which may not 
fitly lie within even a mother's bosom — the mead alone 
of Virtue's brow. Nature can bring forth only new 
things ; Man, by the exercise of arbitrary selection, 
makes a better world, a worthier manhood ; against 
her vagrancy and defect he shows his moral rectitude 
and the faultless symmetry of his art; against her 



152 A STUDY OF DEATH 

prodigality his prudence ; against her spontaneity and 
surprises his care and calculation ; against her undis- 
criminating beneficence and pain his evenly measured 
equity — not yet fully realised, but perfect in its ideal 
aim and sure of ultimate outward completeness. 

Has, then, the Promethean dream come true, despite 
the jealousy of Jove and the arrows of Apollo ? And 
has the spark the old Titan stole from heaven grown 
into the soft flame of human amiability, courtesy, and 
easy tolerance, subduing ancient enmities, and newly 
limning the face of man into this frank mien that shows 
no traces of the ancient fear and furtive cunning ? 
What betterment ! — a term which Nature knows not in 
its moral sense — and all from Choice, the device of 
human will and reason in their revolt from a first nat- 
ure and in their emancipation from its bondage ! The 
old gods have new faces — not only in their fashioning 
from the sculptor's chisel, but as feigned by human 
thought. Long ago, in the inspiration of its revolt 
against the nature-gods, the Hellenic mind had found 
a new goddess — Athene Parthenos — the unbegotten 
virgin, springing fully equipped from the brain of Zeus, 
having no taint of that injustice which runs in every 
line of Nature, and fitly representing the completeness 
of outward integrity — the Queen of the Air, the pa- 
troness of Athens and of the culture whose procedure 
is by arbitrary selection. Now there is a kindlier 
thought of all the gods. Perhaps they were benevo- 
lent, but not omnipotent, themselves limited by a re- 
lentless fate, which, like man, and possibly with the 
help of man, they could only slowly overcome ; per- 
haps they, too, were struggling against refractory mat- 



THE MORAL ORDER 153 

ter for the establishment of justice and for the ex- 
clusion of darkness and death and evil from the uni- 
verse. 

But even while the poet dreams, the vast empire is 
crumbling, soon to be broken into a hundred frag- 
ments. The Age of Gold again recedes into the irre- 
coverable past, and philosophy bewails the vanity of 
all the labour of man under the sun. 

A new civilisation begins the building of its temple 
of Justice — an association involving new impulses and 
motives which tend to the enlightenment and emanci- 
pation of all peoples. But the leaven is hidden, and in 
this new world, as in the old, there are cruel wars, feuds 
of caste, the development of selfish interests and of 
altruism as the expression of educated selfishness ; 
slaveries are abolished only to give place to others 
harsher and less vital \ and, regarding the merely out- 
ward aspects of all human economies, we seem, at the 
end of this nineteenth century, to be approaching an era 
of sterility like that reached in the development of the 
earth's structure before the appearance of cellular life. 
From such a consideration, and in accordance with the 
cosmic analogy, we might reasonably look for the ad- 
vent of some entirely new order of terrestrial beings as 
distinct from humanity as the organic kingdom is from 
the inorganic. 

VIII 

This view of human history, while containing much 
that is true, is partial — distorted by false dogma and 
false philosophy. 



154 A STUDY OF DEATH 

It is true that fear has been an important element 

in the human drama, especially the fear of Death. But 

in the dawn of conscious endeavour, in the 

Fallacies In- !•,•.,• , • r i • 1 » 

voived in the earliest intimations man gave of his peculiar 
Superficial destiny, this fear was not an oppression and 

Retrospect. J *• * 

did not beget panic ; it was the shadow of 
a brightness. Sensibility trembles into its outward 
manifestation. The eye is at first dazed and troubled 
by the light to which it awakens, Yet the organised 
embodiment reaches in man its greatest eagerness and 
hunger. It is the urgency of vital destination rather 
than a deliberate choice, an inward boldness showing 
itself at first in outward shyness. As we have already 
seen, the advance of all organic existence is toward a 
greater peril, a more conspicuous mortality ; and in 
man the venture trespasses all limits, inviting number- 
less risks. How violent must be the subjective uncon- 
scious (or sub -conscious) will which maintains its 
secret disposition despite the conscious avoidance, con- 
flict, and solicitude — characteristics that are, indeed, 
much more apparent in the attitude of modern man 
than in that of a primitive race ! The difference be- 
tween a Roman of the time of Marcus Aurelius and the 
immediate offspring of the fabled wolf-nursed Romu- 
lus and Remus is as great as that between the dainty, 
comfort-loving kitten and its fierce feline prototype, 
the lion, in whose heart was lodged a native courage, 
generosity, and temperance, sharply contrasted with 
the cowardly alarm, the developed cunning, and treach- 
erous playfulness of its sleek descendant. 

Native races show the mark of an urgent destiny, 
which is hidden more and more with the development 



THE MORAL ORDER 155 

of consciousness, and they are not fairly represented 
in the degenerate cave - dwellers, the easy preserva- 
tion and exposure of whose bones, in their secure re- 
treats, have misled or, at least, unduly impressed the 
anthropologist. We are apt to overestimate the con- 
scious weakness of men in those periods when conven- 
tional institutions first began to overshadow natural 
control, just as we exaggerate the artificial character 
of those institutions. The potential energy is at its 
maximum in the least specialised stages of human 
progress ; and though the outward weakness, leading 
to much faltering and stumbling, is manifest to our 
historical judgment, we also discern indications of a 
natural heroism and enthusiasm which gave buoyancy 
to enterprise — a sublime confidence not' to be ac- 
counted for save by reference to that vital destination 
which defies external conditions, transcending experi- 
ence. The human will, in its more spontaneous move- 
ment, had no help from a logical plan, but in reality 
determined the plan itself, establishing that rhythm 
which was essential to the social order, and which, in 
its elaborate distribution, is modulated, losing the vio- 
lent impulse in the regular pulsation. 

The social evolution, primarily an involution, while 
producing a world of its own, distinctive in all its 
aspects, proceeds by natural selection as does all cos- 
mic development— the selection in either case being 
determined by the living will and not by environment, 
which is indeed itself only the result of this sponta- 
neous and harmonious determination. In the social 
as in the cosmic order there is a progressive modu- 
lation of forces, and tendency to uniformity and ap- 



156 A STUDY OF DEATH 

parent stability, until in the extreme poise of the 
human will we observe an apparent indifference, trivial 
casualty, and easily shifting caprice, corresponding to 
similar indications of fortuity and inconsequence in 
happenings upon the surface of things in the material 
world. It is here, in the field of the extremely trite 
and partial, quite divorced from any manifest desire or 
meaning, that we become casuists and fatalists, seek- 
ing for omens in what is least pre-calculable, making a 
lottery in the chances of indeterminate allotment. The 
original divination, however, was based upon the spon- 
taneity rather than upon the mere fortuity of these 
happenings, which, because of their dissociation from 
any definite mental reckoning, were thought to betray 
a hidden divine disposition. The chance at the sur- 
face was thus associated with destiny at the centre. 
To the ancient mind the ''fortuitous concourse of 
atoms," as the initiation of a universe, would have sug- 
gested divinity. How often it happens that the Gate 
of Accident opens upon some movement hitherto con- 
cealed from our conscious observation, but which has 
been going on behind the curtain of the " common 
light of day." When we touch chance, we broach 
God. 

Destiny is only another name for Life itself — Life 
considered not as a fund upon which the will draws, but 
: 5 ::self personal Will, and sufficient to its own issues, 
as not only from eternity consenting to what in time 
engages its forces for resistance and conflict, but from 
eternity determmi:_ its embodiment, its limitations, 
and death itself. 

When, therefore, a critical point in human history is 



THE MORAL ORDER 157 

reached, like that which separates civilisation from the 
simpler native conditions which preceded it, we need 
not regard the transition as abrupt and involving the 
sharp distinction given to it in our logical analysis. 
We look upon civilisation as a kind of second nature 
of humanity, but it is not the less nature, nor less a 
part of human destiny, being indeed that which out- 
wardly distinguishes man from the brute creation. 
Neither is it less spontaneously determined, however 
the genetic quality may be hidden in artifice and con- 
trivance. There is nothing in the dry tree that was 
not begun in the green — not even its dryness. At the 
extremity w r e see in fixed form what at the centre is 
formative in the genetic sense, and the dead leaves 
falling disclose the seed, so that genesis is~proclaimed 
at the last as at the first. 

If it could be supposed that the type of existence 
known to us as the human had failed of an earthly 
manifestation, no other type could, through whatever 
environment, have taken its place ; and all that is dis- 
tinctive to this type in its actual development was per- 
tinent thereto from the beginning. The terrestrial 
headship assumed by man and his mastery, in Deed 
and in Interpretation, were intimated in his simplest 
estate. The conscious human Accord, in the full per- 
spective of its harmony — to which no other note in 
the universe is alien — will sound true to its original 
key, whatever the variations or dissonances in its pro- 
cession. 

But for the upholding and sure efficiency of vital 
destination, life would be at a loss at every critical 
turn. Even the ant or bee or beaver, if there is a 



i:> A STUDY OF DEATH 

break in its instinctive construction, has some flash 
from the broken current which gives a guiding light, 
helping it to a kind of conscious recovery. In human 
experience, by its very terms and limitations, an inces- 
sant discurrence calls for constant recovery — so that 
the entire existence comes to seem a fault, demanding 
redemption. Every illusion of the phenomenal world 
arises from this brokenness, inwardly made whole when 
we see others as ourselves, aliens as kin ; this conscious 
vision being possible only when the perspective is com- 
plete. Destiny, the eternal life, has the mystical vision 
of the kinship from the beginning even unto the end. 
In the successive sphering of self, family, tribe, nation 
— each individuation being in its special involvement a 
kind of seclusion and dissociation, presenting the aspects 
of conflict — there is the vital co-ordination of the plan- 
etary system of humanity, the distribution, throughout 
the series, of the harmony which becomes the system. 

Repulsion — the dissociation already alluded to as 
necessary to integration, so that to the family the neigh- 
bour seems an alien, and still more therefore the adja- 
cent tribe — is shown in conflict ; but the social instinct 
was alwavs a re-agent in a corresponding attraction, 
without which there could have been no conflict — that 
is, none that could be distinguished from the predatory 
and destructive warfare waged by the brute beasts for 
the satisfaction of physical hunger. Hospitality toward 
the strangei always stronger than the hostile dis- 

position. Isaac was the type and Ishmael the excep- 
tion. It is because man is more social than any other 
animal that he is so pre-eminently a fighter; and his bat- 
tles have even an element of romance in them not asso- 



THE MORAL ORDER 159 

ciated with struggles for mere material advantage or 
for the " survival of the fittest." In the lines of destiny 
affiliation lies beyond as well as before the struggle, 
and those who have been shedding each other's blood 
mingle their blood afterward in a solemn pact, establish- 
ing kinship, which is to be still more closely cemented by 
intermarriage ; thus the civil intercourse that follows 
has not wholly passed beyond the living bond. To the 
victors belong not only the spoils, but the vanquished 
themselves, so that, though a man may fail to be his 
brother's keeper, his victim's he must be ; and some- 
times it happens that the situation is reversed, as when 
Rome conquered Greece. 

In the series of social integrations there is in each 
some point of departure, of flight from its own restrict- 
ed economy, toward something outside of itself. Desire 
is itself altruistic. Reproduction, even by fission in the 
lowest organisms, is the becoming another. This altru- 
ism is transformed into that of nutrition, wherein the 
hunger of one individual seizes upon another for assim- 
ilation. Marriage is out of the family, often out of the 
tribe, as in the Roman seizure of Sabine wives. " More 
than my brothers are to me," is the expression of 
friendship in all times. Thus life confesses the larger 
kinship. All dilection is vital, and the rational element 
involved is only its light, not its inward motive. It is 
probably true that integral exclusiveness begets shy- 
ness and human contacts take first the outward ap- 
pearance of antipathy, but it is the sympathy which is 
inwardly dominant. The plunge into the cold stream 
leads to an inward reaction in the vital current, and so 
to greater warmth. It is because of the dominant in- 



160 A STUDY OF DEATH 

terest promoting harmony through discord that native 
warfare developed generous sentiments and a discipline 
afterward of great value in civil administration. The 
first slaves were captives taken in war, and their capt- 
ure, being the alternative to their extermination, was 
one of the alleviations of warfare. Their subsequent 
domestication " set them in families " and developed in 
both masters and slaves the loyalty and affection nat- 
ural to so intimate familiarity. 

However complex the grouping, the family remained 
in all its sanctities and tender emotions, and was an 
important factor in all strifes and alliances. In the 
most complex and formal of all ancient civilisations, 
that of Rome, we see in the last pages of its long rec- 
ord how persistent to the end was the worship of the 
Lares and Penates and the care of the ancestral tomb 
within the sacred precincts of the home. During the 
period of Roman civilisation scarcely a single animal 
was added to the number of those which had been do- 
mesticated in primitive times : but these tamed beasts, 
in so far as they were directly associated with the land, 
and the land itself, could not be sold : they were sacred 
to the family. In all ages one's country is his father- 
land— -\r.vA? — this term continuing the semblance of 
the patriarchate, as all economy is. by its very etymol- 
ogy, associated with the household. 

The civil economy grew as naturally as the domestic, 
and was from the first sustained by the urgency of 
sentiments and interests which, transcending human ex- 
perience, were its ground and not its product. There 
was no need of new reinforcement from any source 
not already existing. 



THE MORAL ORDER 161 

Religion cannot properly be said to be or to have 
been a necessary sanction of the moral order. Prima- 
rily morality was in no way distinct from religion. The 
secularisation of government, ethics, art, and philosophy 
went on pari passu with the progressive specialisation; 
and at the same time religious expression was in like 
manner specialised and in the same degree, itself in 
its outward form as much an apparent departure from 
and contradiction to the central spiritual principle of 
human life as was every other manifestation. It is 
only because of this departure that religion has seemed 
to be even incidentally a sanction of morality. 

For the sake of clearness and at the risk of repeti- 
tion, we must here revert to considerations already ad- 
vanced in previous sections of this work. The original 
sacrament of kinship— the fountain of primitive piety, 
God-ward or man-ward — laid no more stress upon jus- 
tice than does Nature, save that it was not. like Nature, 
impartial in its inequity. It claimed indulgence from 
the human or divine father rather than justice — ex- 
cessive and exclusive indulgence. With the expansion 
of kinship the limits of exclusiveness were also wi- 
dened, looking forward to the idea of the All- Father 
— a spiritual idea, the perfect realisation of which is 
the kingdom of heaven, whose inequities, whether of 
bliss or of pain, are as impartial as those of Nature — a 
kingdom, moreover, of living righteousness rather than 
of formal rectitude. 

The illusions connected with the phenomenal world 
— /. t\. the world as represented in our consciousness, 
and as affecting our volitions directed toward outward 
ends — contradict, or seem to contradict, the Reality of 



162 A STUDY OF DEATH 

eternal life as apprehended by that consciousness and 
determined by that will whereby we are the partakers 
of this life. These illusions of the broken world to the 
broken mind are inevitable, are vital. It is as if hu- 
man destiny were itself thus broken and specialised, 
making for us the beauty of color and sound and 
speech and thought and feeling — at the same time also 
the defect in these, that in them which, while essential 
to all integration or limited embodiment, must work a 
dissolution of every synthesis, wearing the bravest 
vesture to rags. 

These illusions belong to the very beginnings of 
structural development in religion, art, and ethics ; but 
in these first aspirations, where the difficulty is the 
greatest, and where the view is narrowest and there is 
the least help from accumulated experience, the poten- 
tial energy is miraculous, overleaping barriers, lifting 
easily the burden of life, with a strength to spare that 
transcends the task, and solicitudes are not oppressive. 
The first sacrifices in religious rituals are not propitia- 
tions but festivals ; the first art was spontaneous, and 
the pursuit of virtue easy and natural. In the golden 
dawn the prodigal sets out upon his journey with no 
grave misgivings. The sense of facility comes with 
the descent, when the uplifting force of life which once 
lightened and vitalised the whole structure is being 
withdrawn, yielding it to gravitating and destructive 
tendencies. In this dull twilight, full of solicitudes, 
the illusions of time imprison and oppress. The bub- 
bling fountain that became an impetuous torrent is 
swallowed up in the dry sands of the desert. 

Every manifestation of human life passes through 



THE MORAL ORDER 163 

this cycle. The reaction is in every moment, hidden 
at first but finally conspicuous. The structure gains 
upon the life, absorbing more and more the conscious 
will and attention, until it seems all in all ; the impet- 
uous current bears man on to the completeness of in- 
tegral form, which he regards with pride and strives to 
hold at its noontide culmination of beauty and strength, 
its full content; this is the height of his illusions, 
which now have wrapped him in their luminous veils, 
becoming his whole expression, his very thought and 
language ; but while, in conscious complacence, he re- 
joices in his integrity, in his formed character, in his 
complete art, in his argent-rounded thought, in his es- 
tablished polity, and in his consummate religious rite 
and dogma, his inmost will repents itself of -its accom- 
plishment, and the reaction becomes outwardly evident 
in induration and senescence. 

The illusions, then, that arise in the human con- 
sciousness from the specialisation of existence and 
of consciousness itself, pertain to the whole phenom- 
enal world, including human experience ; in their 
beauty and glory they are associated with the passions 
and aspirations, the attractions and repulsions, the as- 
similations and jealousies that are involved in every 
integration of individual and social life — fluent in the 
superabundant vitalities engaged in crescent organ- 
isation, and fixed in the mature and stable structure, 
where they are stereotyped in scripture and speech, in 
established customs and codes, in the formal certitudes 
of science, in the canons of arrested art and impulse, 
and in the suspended inspiration and ritualistic ex- 
pression of a settled faith ; and in their graver hues 



164 A STUDY OF DEATH 

they blend with the purple shadows of dissolution, 
when stability itself is seen to be the flimsiest and 
raggedest of all the veils hiding the eternal Reality. 
That which we have been urgently persuaded to call 
something is brought to naught ; no trace is left of 
outward goal and object — our very habitation and in- 
vestment gone. 

No form of life can claim pre-eminence over any 
other as escaping these illusions. No wise virgins of 
Religion can give of their oil to the foolish virgins of 
Art or Philosophy or Morality, where all alike are shut 
out from the Bridegroom's presence, save as in every 
room — in Academe or Hall of Judgment as in a Tem- 
ple — He is given lodgment and met or overtaken on 
every path of the devious pilgrimages. To all alike the 
veils that hide are the only revelations ; and all alike 
deny as well as confess — Peter the same as Judas. 

In the building up of any order the spiritual princi- 
ple is veiled and apparently contradicted, whether the 
order be religious or moral ; between these no dis- 
tinction arises in human consciousness before each has 
been so specialised as to take the form of a definite 
system ; and always the prevailing characteristics of 
the one are those of the other. What men at any time 
feel and believe socially is precisely what they feel and 
believe in their religious life, the rule of their conduct 
showing their thought of the divine. If they have a 
living righteousness, from hearts loving, forgiving, not 
judging, generous not according to exact measure, with- 
out servile fear of others or a desire to inspire such 
fear toward themselves, then to them God has this 
same living righteousness, from the same disposition 



THE MORAL ORDER 165 

of heart. What men think it is right for them to do 
they regard also as the righteousness of God. If they 
are satisfied with formal justice and with conformity to 
outward standards, then they deem such satisfaction 
an essential feature of divine government. 

It cannot, then, be properly said that religion is the 
sanction of the moral order • it would indeed seem 
more rational to derive religious doctrine from the ex- 
igencies of that order, since those features of the latter 
which grow out of its peculiar limitations come to be 
dogmatically associated with divine action in a sphere 
where such limitations cannot be supposed to exist. 
In reality religious practice and thought have the same 
tendencies as all other practice and thought — the rite 
and dogma becoming, in the specialisation of a system, 
as formal and unvital as an outworn state ceremony or 
a stale maxim of experience. It is not that the rite or 
dogma are essentially lifeless or insignificant, but that 
in their fixed form, their integral completeness, they 
have confined their life and meaning within the form, 
which has itself lost plasticity, and that as an expres- 
sion of the human heart they have become automatic 
through vain repetition, 

" Like a song of little meaning though the words are strong." 

A creed may express a universal truth, a spiritual reality 
in itself so profound as to lie at the very root of life — 
such a creed as is expressed in the simple phrase Our 
Father, which, seen in its genetic reality, transcends 
space, time, and causation, and can never be outworn. 
But within what narrow limitations may this creed be 



166 A STUDY OF DEATH 

held ? We need not go back to find its provincial limi- 
tation in tribal theology or the early Hebrew theocracy ; 
it is equally implied in the latest Te Deum sung in 
all the churches of a civilised country because of a 
great national victory. In every social organisation 
less inclusive than that of a universal brotherhood this 
simple creed must be denied, and in the competitions 
of every practical economy it is irreparably broken 
and compounded. It is urged by those who desire a 
revision of our religious creeds that these should be 
adapted to the advanced conditions of human prog- 
ress ; but it is by this very adaptation, which is a con- 
stant necessity in order to a modus vivendi, that their 
essential principle is contradicted. While social organ- 
isation at every stage of its progress brings peoples 
nearer together and expands the sentiment of human 
brotherhood, developing a cosmopolitan sympathy, yet 
it at the same time stimulates competition, multiplying 
its opportunities in the ever-widening field of industrial 
enterprise and commercial exchange. 

We cannot here consider the possibilities anticipated 
in the dreams of socialism, and which may indeed 
transcend those dreams when the sentiment of hu- 
man brotherhood becomes universally prevalent. We 
are here confined to a view of social economies as 
they have been and are now organised ; and in 
this view it is evident that both the religious and the 
moral sentiment accommodate themselves to the con- 
ditions of social organisation, though in so doing they 
contradict themselves, slay the prophets, and crucify 
the Lord. It may more truly be said that they become 
that organisation, in all its exclusions and inclusions — ■ 



THE MORAL ORDER 167 

its strifes and affiliations ; they are genetic in their 
operation, and in becoming that which contradicts 
themselves they only express the tropical action and 
reaction proper to life itself. 

Thus human experience, which, in a superficial his- 
torical retrospect, seems to depend so much upon arbi- 
trary selection, following some rational plan con- 
sciously devised, appears upon a closer study to be as 
spontaneous as nature, having its roots in the quick 
ground of a life invisible and inexplicable. Its possi- 
bilities are incalculable, and it is as difficult to trace a 
logical plan in its past as to forecast its future. There 
is no science of history, and our philosophy of human- 
ity as of the individual man is confined toT a study of 
growth and decay. Our mental analysis and our im- 
aginative constructions fall short of the hidden pur- 
pose, which is shown, and is yet to be shown, only in 
the issues of Life itself — Life creative, genetic, tran- 
scending causation. What we see at any period of 
history, in so far as we truly see anything, is some por- 
tion of humanity in the stress of social integration, all 
its vital forces engaged in the process, eagerly, passion- 
ately, and, with feverish excess of zeal, violently seizing 
upon all earthly materials and boldly annexing to the 
terrestrial realm the celestial and infernal ; or we behold 
it in the relaxation of these energies, in a process of 
decline or degeneration. The types differ — as the 
Hebrew, Greek, and Roman in the ancient world — and 
with them the kind and degree of accomplishment and 
the character of dissolution. The same external con- 
ditions affect different races in different ways, and an 



i68 A STUDY OF DEATH 

extensive movement, like that of the mediaeval cru- 
sades, involving many peoples, produces certain results 
in some countries, and quite diverse or even contrary 
results in others. The genius of a race or of some 
individual leader standing for a race — a Caesar, a 
Mohammed, or a Napoleon — determines the political 
complexion of a continent, upsetting all previous calcu- 
lations. Our host we have to reckon with is not Logic 
but Life — a vital destination determining distinctive 
types, temperaments, aspirations, and jealousies. 



IX 

The categorical imperative — what we call conscience 

— proceeds from the practical or living Will and 

Reason, and the form of the mandate is plastic, 

according to the vital determination. Its 

Conscience. ... r , 

variation is not from one fixed proposition 
to another, thus presenting itself as an incongruous 
series — it is a variation in the disposition of life. 
This imperative is a bond in integration, and in death 
an absolution. Take, for example, the family rela- 
tion — of husbands to wives and children to parents ; 
this involves obligations which are vital to social in- 
tegration, and which are varied in passing from a 
patriarchate to a more complex society. He who pro- 
nounced against divorce, when asked whose wife she 
should be in the resurrection who had had seven suc- 
cessive husbands in this life, regarded the question as 
not pertinent to the state awaiting us which should 
know no marriage. He taught that the commandment 



THE MORAL ORDER 169 

to observe the Sabbath was for man and not man for 
the commandment— a truth applicable to all command- 
ment, which must be a vital requirement. 

All selection is for a living use in the most com- 
plex as in the simplest social order. What in a no- 
madic habit is a quick taking and leaving becomes in 
more stable communities a long holding and a slow 
release ; the suspense is emphasised. The co-ordi- 
nation of an elaborate system affects the sentiment re- 
lating to property, reputation, rights, and duties. The 
categorical imperative reaches out to every manifold 
detail; and in all relations honour yields honesty and 
faith fidelity. The fruits in the garden of experience 
are growths and not mere fashions arbitrarily wrought 
by cunning artifice ;* even the flower of Merit has its 
living root, however much in its nice human culture it 
may have lost of the wild flavour of its native stock. 
The honey of the hive is, not far away, the wild honey 
of the tree. The grape in the autumn sunshine seems 
to invite the bruising of the contrived human press that 
so, by its ultimate fermentation, it may yield its finer 
spirit. The things men try for or by which they are 
tried are in themselves nothings, nor has the trial itself 
any meaning apart from the spontaneous life which is 
the ground of all experience. The doors we knock at 
with importunity, or which we unlock by the mechanic 
leverage of our keys, open to the treasures of life, 
which have no wealth save for that life's native abun- 
dance. Opportunity and temptation have only the sub- 
jective significance given them by the heart's desire. 
Our existence, in so far as it has worth and beauty 
and dignity, is made up of passions, which, however 



170 A STUDY OF DEATH 

modulated in temperament, must for their freshness 
be forever renewed from their inmost source, and 
which are never very far removed from the native at- 
tractions and repulsions that originally determined 
their spheres and orbits. We do not prize unim- 
passioned goodness. Culture is worthless save for 
its secret inspiration. 

Accordingly we find that human sentiment, in the 

most refined civilisation and brought into its most 

orderly realm, is not so much a revolt from 

Convention J 

not a Revolt Xature as in many of its moral aspects it 

from Xature. . ~ . . 

seems to be. Conscious restraint, or rational 
control, regarded as a moral merit, is but a specialised 
form of that inhibition which, unconscious and un- 
trained, is yet a more potent and surer bond in all 
natural operation. There is no such temperance attain- 
able as that which Xature has spontaneously — no posi- 
tive purity like that of passion itself. The conscious 
voluntary effort in this direction has its ground in the 
inward temper. 



Rectitude rigidly conceived, whose sign is a straight 
line, is not a living ideal, but in every real motion it 
Formal 1S a notional standard which is shunned as 
justice. we ]i as sought. Righteousness has its out- 
ward notional standard of formal justice, but no real 
righteousness is ever truly represented by the even 
balance of the scales. The flowing equation of life 
suggests compensation, but cannot even for an infini- 
tesimal moment rest therein. There is no motion 



THE MORAL ORDER 171 

but for some preponderance that disturbs equilibrium. 
A single inflexibility in any order would destroy it. 
Justice even in its own field refuses to be just. 

Having reference to illusory appearance, we think 
that our aim is to secure rectitude, justice, stability-, 
but, as in nature there is no point of rest, so in human 
nature satisfaction seeks emptiness as eagerly as emp- 
tiness satisfaction* Men neither desire to render or to 
receive absolute justice, having therefor a contempt 
as for anything Laodicean. Even in business, a dollar 
is parted with for the sake of or received at the risk of 
usury ; and the zest of all commercial exchange is the 
thought of vantage on either side ; and as a benefit is 
given as well as taken, the barter resembles that benefi- 
cent and complementary interchange always going on 
in Nature. Any withdrawal from this commerce, by a 
refusal to expend or to produce, checks the natural in- 
crease and tends to sterility. The general disposition 
of the merchant is toward an overflowing measure 
rather than the close, hard bargain. Men love to act 
the part of the host, and are gracious enough also to 
cheerfully receive hospitality. In such amenities they 
console themselves for the necessary restraints upon 
their generosity imposed by the conditions of trade ; 
and one of the sweetest graces of home is that there 
one may give and take with no thought of return. Few 
are they who keep within bounds even in the perform- 
ance of duties, especially of those duties which involve 
sentiment ; few who are careful, prudent, or thrifty 
enough to manage a business for themselves, or who, 
in subordinate positions, do not overdo service ■ few 
who are as conscious of their merits as they are self- 



- - A STUDY OF 



reproachful for their faults; few indeed who do not 
cany altruism to a mischievous extreme, regarding the 

1222225 :: irieers rz.zzt ±22 :i:eir :--_-_. 

As every 2: v. : . :en2en:y:5. 25 Ezers : 2 ri;v. :ver- 
L 2 lie 2Y' s : in 22 2:221m 222222: every 5 en:222 en: 72222222 
is overcharged and runs into excess. Men are enthu- 
siastic and intemperate in their patriotism ; they will 
n:: 222252:222222 '.zyi.r/. They re::.:", 25 v:r as :hey 
may, deration to a personal sovereign for the vitality it 
see m 5 : 2 ared with the service of even an 

ideal commonwealth. They cling to an intimate house- 
hold economy, even if it involves slavery, or to a feudal 
22221. 2n:ii 222 :ee reieimess 222:52 22 12221:255 mey ire 
perforce emancipated. In a democracy based upon uni- 
versil 52122:22:2 2222225525 22 ::e: vriii y:eii :: :i:e 22225- 
:e: :han to that of ideas, regardless 

::' 2222er2ii :v:e:ts:s 2: 52222. 222. vriii 22222 ::r 2 preyi- 
dice sooner and with more zeal than for an ethical prin- 
v:ie ~ ----- - iii. in dee 2. 22 ::e reidiiy f :ii2 ~v ±e ieiier- 

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2 2212152-22 servfre. 221 rfie ie: 
:e 522:522-2 'ivi 21.1221 mieis: 
::rv. M:.n ""22:5 n: tiring 22 : 
is to a partial and special pro¥ 



7 :'.-: : : :evri: 15 : : 7 t : liiy ii: ; 2: 22225 .:: 2 7 
iible merit. In all genuine faith from the 



THE MORAL ORDER 173 

ning, Grace has been the essential divine quality — the 
basis of a forgiveness as free as the fallibility of man 
is inevitable. 



XI 

Progress in all systems has tendencies that seem to 
contradict human sympathy and faith. Every human 
synthesis, become a sphere, hardens at the • .- . . 

J Limitation 

surface, and the superficial contacts in the and 
field of outward experience disclose the hard- 
ness and intractability and attrition. It is here, in a 
field of effort — training, culture, severe discipline — that 
the sense of arbitrary volition is intensified ; here, in 
this scant and rocky soil, that man cultivates^the hardy 
virtues which are prized exceedingly as the fruitage of 
patient toil ; here where he stumbles most that he 
idealises rectitude ; here where he is a pupil, gaining 
knowledge and power by slow acquirement, that the 
aim of all life seems to be improvement, betterment. 
Here are his varied and exquisite pleasures as well as 
his pains ; his successes as well as his failures ; the 
flush of pride as well as the blush of shame. 

The induration, like the limitation, is a Mercy, the 
express favour of a life lost for an exquisite sensibility 
and capacity through which it is consciously recovered. 
This human incarnation — the latest and most wondrous 
of all creative miracles known to us — surely it was the 
divine longing from the beginning, gained only after 
many avatars. Eagerly the water became the wine and 
the wine the blood, until in psychical man the universe 
is reflected as in a microcosm. He stands upon an 



174 A STUDY OF DEATH 

earth dulled and stilled for his sake, stands where the 
sun meets the dark glebe and gives forth a warmth not 
known to interstellar spaces ; he rejoices in the same 
intimate warmth through all his pulses and in the 
breath of the tempered and tempering atmosphere. 
Light is broken for his eye and sound for his ear, and 
the whole world for his varied hunger. After the tre- 
mendous clashings of the elements and in the midst of 
clashings still continued, but which he perceives not, 
there is this armistice for his peace, this suspense for 
the happiness of his dwelling. The isolation of his in- 
dividuality is a blissful seclusion into whose penumbra 
only the predestined guest may enter, who, however re- 
pellent in his first guise, is afterward sureiy unmasqued 
as an accordant friend. The day is meted to his 
measured effort and the night to the measured rhythm 
of his sleep. As his pulse repeats itself for his body's 
growth, so does the pulse of memory and habit for the 
gradual increase of his experience. The successive 
days, like the successive moments, are 

" Linked each to each by natural piety," 

and be does not see what wondrous change is in the 
transition, and that what seems to him continuous is a 
series of deaths and resurrections ; the dead quietly 
buries its dead, and each day is new, not overmuch 
troubled by the ghost of yesterday or the shadow of 
to-morrow. The blessed oblivion of the past and igno- 
rance of the future secure the clearness of the present, 
giving to each moment its particularity and that suffi- 
ciency which it properly has, since in it is eternity, as 
in every particular is the universe. In this comforta- 



THE MORAL ORDER 175 

ble seclusion he does not hear the grass grow and is 
not sensible of the swift motion of the earth in space ; 
his communication and correspondence are well guard- 
ed, so that but little of the joys and sorrows of the wide 
world enter to confuse his individual portion, which is 
itself, whether sad or joyous, an allotment by littles and 
tempered to his limitations. As pet names take the form 
of diminutives, so our intense delights and sympathies 
are inseparably associated with our limitations, with what 
is petty and partial in our lot. Fidelity in small things 
is the test of the faithful, who, though they may be 
made rulers over many things, still hold the small things 
nearest and dearest, finding in close intimacies the home- 
liness of existence. The wife of one's bosom, the few 
friends of choice — these for nearly all men make up 
the sum of all that gives joy and worth and dignity to 
the earthly life, and the virtues and duties born of these 
are christened again with colder names for larger asso- 
ciations. Here is the nucleus of all social order, pre- 
served fresh and tender by the very hardnesses of 
elaborate system, as the soft children are guarded by 
the toil-hardened hands of parents, whose wearisome 
routine encircles them with a wall of defence. All in- 
durations are walls about the free play of life within. 
So fortitude becomes sacrifice. The more complex and 
formal and unyielding the social order is in its outward 
structure, the more nearly does it secure the inviola- 
bility of the individual and domestic seclusion. The 
sign of life within the veil of the temple seems reversed 
in the outer courts, becoming the contradictory sign. 
The flexible, the flowing, the spontaneous becomes 
there the fixed, the arbitrary, the inflexible. Grace 



176 A STUDY OF DEATH 

there becomes Justice, the Trope of life relentless 
Atropos. Thus life is fully clothed upon with mor- 
tality. 

As it is the complex vertebrate animal which is also 
the warm-blooded and delicately nerved, and as the 
tough shell encases the sweet kernel or vital germ, so 
that ancient civilisation in which the family institution 
was regarded the most precious and important, and in 
which close intimacies had the deepest sincerity, so 
that it gave to the modern world the name for piety 
and every other virtue, developed also from the sacred 
domestic penetralia the most complete system of public 
functions and laws, the highest dignity and most in- 
violable obligations of citizenship, the most binding 
soldier sacrament, and the toughest fibre of an imperial 
structure, thus becoming the very backbone of the 
world it dominated. 

But the hard envelope about the seed must be 
broken for the seed's germination and new abundance, 
contributing in its dissolution to the sustenance of 
the fresh growth, as in its outward completeness it 
served for protection : so the induration of all human 
systems is the indication of their maturity, their readi- 
ness for death ; their suns at apogee have proclaimed 
a new summer. The systems, like generations, pass 
away, not because of their imperfections, but rather be- 
cause they have reached such perfectness as their scope 
has permitted : not to give place to the better, but to 
the new. In this passing, that which seemed stable 
and inflexible becomes the flowing ; that which seemed 
complete discloses its corruptibility : all that has been 
formed or acquired, whatever its excellence, beauty. 



THE MORAL ORDER 177 

and loveliness, is brought to naught, save for its ser- 
vice of descent — its liberation of the spirit. 

"So God fulfils himself in many ways 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 



XII 

In the completion of the cycle is confessed its spirit- 
ual principle, which in the stress of structural forma- 
tion and functioning was obscured and apparently con- 
tradicted. I11 articulo 7nortis is uttered the 
true countersign to the eternal verity ; and ^^ £°°" 
it is seen that stability, fixity, immutability, - 
and inflexibility are not pertinent to the eternal life — 
that these are terms which destroy themselves by nat- 
ural termination and recourse. 

To the eye of sense, regarding the worth of the 
structure as belonging to the edifice itself, seeing 
beauty and truth only in the formed thing — the formed 
mind, the formed character, the acquired experience — 
and the good of anything only in its possession, this 
vastation of a system seems utter vanity; but to the 
spiritual apprehension the loss is wholly gain — redemp- 
tion, rehabilitation, a new creation ; the eternal life, 
itself the truth, beauty, and charm of all that is visible, 
depends not upon any structure or acquisition. 

It is because the eternal life is in the bright day 
that we ask for its continuance and regret its decline ; 
also, it is because of this eternal life in it that it can- 
not stay ; but that life is in the darkness as in the 



178 A STUDY OF DEATH 

light. Happily our conservatism, sound and whole- 
some as it seems, nay, as it is, at the noontide of ma- 
ture integrity, like the fixed fibre of the strong oak, is 
itself the habit of induration, ready to fall into the rou- 
tine of descent and release, and serving as it falls. So 
turns the planet into new dark, new dawn. So turns 
the Wheel of Life. 

It is only in our conscious representation to our- 
selves of life seen in a partial arc of its cycle that even 
in ascending movements there seems to be a con- 
flict with death. It is here that death is included in 
its essential meaning for the constant renewal of youth. 
It is a part of our planetary opacity and confinement, 
and because our attention is fixed upon outward uses, 
that we regard evil as merely disciplinary and our pres- 
ent existence as peculiarly a probation — the contracted 
ante-chamber of eternity. The emphasis of Time pre- 
vents our seeing that our existence now is as truly 
grounded in the eternal as it ever can be, and that 
this is the ground of our reconcilement with all that 
we contend with and resist. 



XIII 

If our exile were real, if we could really leave the 
Father's house, if by some chasm Time were divorced 
from Eternity, and if human existence were wholly ex- 
perimentation, consciously regulated and in 
^nTime* 1 * ts ent; irety determined by arbitrary choice 
on a rational plan — as from partial aspects 
it seems to be — then indeed might we pray for absolute 



THE MORAL ORDER 179 

annihilation. In this view the moral order would be a 
system of inextricable confusion. If we can believe in 
such separation of humanity from its Lord that our 
life is hidden elsewhere than in him, then is inevitable 
that other belief, formulated in the extreme rational- 
istic specialisation of dogma, that there are dread 
realms of unutterable woe forever excluded from the 
divine presence and from the operation of divine laws 
and uses. If the material is separated by an impassa- 
ble chasm from the spiritual, then may we accept the 
dualism of the Manichaeist or adopt the scepticism of 
the biologist who asserts that matter only is eternal 
and that the entire realm of life is but a fleeting mo- 
ment of cosmic time, a shuddering pulsation that for 
an instant disturbs the monstrous and heartless mech- 
anism, an alien dream as inexplicable as it is transient. 
If his rectitude, his formed character — that outward 
integrity which he builds up for himself — is at its very 
best man's only blessedness, then is his experience 
vain ; if that whereof he is ashamed or that of which 
he is proud, if what he consciously shuns or what he 
consciously seeks be the full measure of his evil or of 
his good, then, in the superficial jaggedness of the 
things wherein he is entangled, is his destiny the most 
trivial of inconsequences, the ultimate caprice. 

Not thus is he to be accounted for, and never in the 
depths of his spiritual being has he thus accounted for 
himself — as if he were a fragment of the world, appear- 
ing suddenly upon the ocean of existence, moved this 
way and that by varying winds and currents and by 
the whims of his own variable and near-sighted intelli- 
gence, and then as suddenly submerged beneath the 



180 a STUDY OF DEATH 

waves. He never had a spiritual philosophy which did 
not make him one with the Eternal — which did not 
make him the measure and explanation of the world 
rather than the world the measure and explanation of 
him — one in which the scope of his evil and of his 
good did not embrace all evil and all good. In him 
alone did life awake and think and speak, but not thus 
did he forego his share in the eternal silence. What- 
ever his forfeit, it compromised the universe, and en- 
gaged all the powers of the universe for his redemp- 
tion. No transaction could in its scope be too far- 
reaching to be commensurate with his eternal interests. 



XIV 

The moral order must be referred to a spiritual 
source, and whatever its contrary aspects, those are 
such as characterise any order when seen in the light of 

Ps chkai * ts centra * principle. Regarded as a whole, 
Progress de- the moral order is that cycle of human experi- 

Spirituai ence which, beginning in a flesh-and-blood kin- 

Growth. sJiip^ i s completed in a kinship which embraces 
the tmiverse. Whatever it may seem to be in any part 
of the cycle, it must in its totality be the outward ex- 
pression of man's spiritual destiny. Conducted to its 
completeness by any rational plan or by rules derived 
from experience, it would be as remote from the King- 
dom of Heaven as is the embodiment of Confucian 
ethics in the Chinese social system ; but if we conceive 
the psychical progress of man to include his spiritual 
growth in that garden of which the Father of Spirits is 



THE MORAL ORDER 181 

the husbandman, and to be in its largest expression a 
harmony whose centre is in the regenerate heart of a 
divine humanity, then must this progress as a whole 
transcend as well as include those constructions of 
human will and reason which lie within the limitations 
of experience — must indeed so far transcend these as 
in its regeneration to be a repentance thereof, a re- 
pentance beyond all the natural repentances in the 
series of creative transformations, bringing in the new 
heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth the living 
righteousness. 

These considerations which, in so far as they are 
based upon a Christian philosophy, more properly be- 
long to a subsequent chapter, are here introduced as a 
protest against the identification of human -regenera- 
tion with any possible outward accomplishment or in- 
tegral completeness. But it is natural and consistent 
with all analogies to regard man's psychical progress 
as, in its mightiest reaction, associated with his redemp- 
tion. 



XV 

Regarding the moral order as grounded in a spiritual 
principle, we see the working of this principle in what 
seems most arbitrary and conventional. Our plans 
and charts of life are not merely subject to 
revision, but they become parts of a dissolv- The L ^ dden 
ing view, the material world itself becoming 
spiritually solvent. We cannot but fix an intent and 
expectant gaze upon the objects of our striving \ but 
even while we look there is a change like that which 



182 A STUDY OF DEATH 

comes in dreams, and some hidden hope is answered 
that is often contrary to the conscious expectation and 
always different. There is a real world nearer and 
more intimate than that which lies next to our eyes or 
our hands. It is as if we were projecting our oppo- 
sites, really yielding when we seem to resist, and releas- 
ing what we seem to seize, some deeper dilection con- 
tradicting the apparent choice and taking the evil 
which we outwardly reject ; so that, while we are load- 
ing the scapegoat with our sins to bear them away into 
the wilderness, there is something within us that takes 
sin itself into that ancient confessional, wherein it is 
conjoined with all dark mysteries and finds its recon- 
cilement with the eternal life. What outwardly seems 
weakness and shame is inwardly glorified, becoming a 
part of the creative transformation whereby the quick- 
ening spirit moves to issues registered, indeed, in time, 
but known for what they really are and mean only in 
the council-chamber of the Eternal, where the Son is 
one with the Father. 



CHAPTER III 
ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 

I 

"Remember now thy Creator * in the days of thy 
youth," says the Preacher, recognising the nearness of 
youth to its mystical source, as if in the as- 
cendent movement of the fountain it might Bl ^ ea ^ 
feel its motion ere it moved — as if through- 
a gate not yet closed it had some vision of unwasted 
brightness and power. 

Wordsworth associated childhood with intimations 
of immortality, though, as presented in his sublime ode, 
these intimations are those of an Eternal Life rather 
than of immortality — the native sense of that life as an 
unseen ocean whose waves are heard beating upon 
the shores of Time, " though inland far we be." 

In the scientific view birth is most intimately associ- 
ated with death. Thus, in the series of creative spe- 
cialisations, sex appears simultaneously with death. 
Reproduction is a katabolic, or descending, process , 
the matrix is a tomb, from which Childhood is the 
resurrection. The highest organisms show most com- 
plex dying as well as most complex living; and in 

* In the Hebrew the word signifies " Well." 



184 A STUDY OF DEATH 

every physiological operation the dying lies next the 
living process ; thus the metabolism goes on, nutri- 
tion turning and falling into secretion and secretion 
stimulating nutrition. 

Looking upon birth as the beginning of an organ- 
ism, or the apparent beginning, and upon death as its 
apparent conclusion, then the whole term or cycle of 
its visible existence is the interval between these ; but 
the extremes which we thus separate in thought are in 
every living moment of the organism brought togeth- 
er. The most significant fact disclosed by recent 
embryological research is the intimate connection of 
death with birth. Death permits birth. 

In the most complex forms of life both death and 
birth are specialised and accentuated and are, more- 
over, prolonged and elaborate periods. In certain 
species, between the lowest and highest, the death of 
the parent seems to be the immediate sequel of the 
parental function, thus conspicuously emphasising the 
katabolic or mortal characteristic of the reproductive 
process. 



II 

The earth, before it could be the dwelling-place of 
man (of man as we know him) had come into a state 
of suspense and temperament, wherein her veiled poten- 
cies had a novel and varied manifestation — 

Specific t h e cosm j c habit and Constitution of a plan- 
Preparation 

for Ascent et, showing what would almost seem a new 

rgamsms. ^^ ^ matter. As the arrest of her flight, 

bringing her into her destined orbit, disclosed grav- 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 185 

ity, so the hiding of her heat permitted the molar at- 
traction to enter into a free play of molecular affinities 
hitherto latent in the primal expansion and tension. 
The heat radiated from the contracting sphere is spe- 
cific ; indeed, all the energies manifest in this ultimate 
constitution of matter have a microcosmic specialty, 
and in their planetary transmutation are released for 
new tensions, diversely, multiformly, and minutely ex- 
pressing the old theme in temperate and discrete ar- 
ticulation. It is as if what Plato, thinking of the ge- 
neric, meant in his conception of Ideas had become 
species, diversified in bewildering variety, especially in 
organic existence. The very distance of the planet 
from the sun seems to permit this free play of life 
upon its surface, as the departure of heat from water 
permits crystallisation, or as the arrest of nutrition 
brings fruit and seed. 

In this complex hierarchy of Nature discrete accords 
are sustained, so that they fall not into indifference 
and confusion ; degrees of excellence are marked — of 
truth, beauty, and goodness ; individual sequestration 
and tranquillity are secured, and for each life a way — 
its own that no other can take, and yet open to ac- 
cordant intimacies and correspondences • and in the 
psychical involvement life acquires a feeling of itself 
and a conscious control, the liberty of its dwelling. 
Everything becomes special — birth, existence, death, 
providence itself. Space and Time are but the room 
allowed for the play of action and interaction within 
an appreciable scope, and the varied seasons through 
which all things pass in their limited cycles. For all 
living things repose, like work, is special, giving to 



186 A STUDY OF DEATH 

night and sleep and oblivion — to all kinds of release 
— peculiar and grateful meanings. 

Moreover, in this ultimate constitution of matter, we 
note a special latency of forces, a vis inertia of the ele- 
ments — terrestrial insignia of the primal potency. Ele- 
ments which readily combine at ordinary temperatures 
are set far apart. Thus it is said that there is iron 
enough hidden within the earth to wholly deprive the 
atmosphere of its oxygen if it were all exposed at the 
surface. Receptacles are provided for storage and 
immunity, and walls for protection. In living organ- 
isms vitality includes the physical and chemical pro- 
cesses, holding them in suspense for its own ascent or 
allowing their disclosure in its descent, just as the ex- 
pansive power which we call the centrifugal force in 
the solar system includes and veils gravitation until 
the limit of expansion is reached, when the reaction is 
disclosed. 

At the last point of descent in the specialisation of 
inorganic matter, which we call dead — at the point of 
barrenness, appears the plasma of ascending organisms. 
Science for the explication of undulations or waves of 
energy (the forces themselves which we call heat, elec- 
tricity, etc., being diversified according to wave-lengths) 
postulates the ether as a vibratory medium pervading 
all matter — the atoms of matter being vortical motions 
of this ether. These vortical motions are likened to 
smoke-wreaths, versions which are at the same time 
introversions or retroversions. We would prefer to say 
that life pervades the universe, and to designate these 
motions of the ether as the tropic action and reaction 
proper to life itself — an evolution which is at the same 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 187 

time involution. For whatever we may interpose be- 
tween the phenomenal world and its Creator — whether 
it be the absolute of abstract metaphysics or the ether 
of physical science — the medium itself demands expli- 
cation, and we must in the end confront the mystery of 
the Eternal Life. In the organic plasma, then — in this 
nucleus of a universe which, seen by us as ascending 
(since we are a part of the ascension), we are willing to 
call living — there is the action and reaction of life. 
We may think of these as internal motions, represent- 
ing them through such images as to our limited under- 
standing seem most adequate for their expression ; but 
the only real apprehension of them we can ever have 
is through their own expression in living manifestation. 

If we consider this protoplasm as a material sub- 
stance having certain properties and certain chemical 
constituents plus vitality ; if we think of it as an in- 
volute in which all forms of vegetable and animal life 
are held latently and implicitly, awaiting the stimulus 
of environment for their evolution and taking such di- 
verse shapes and functions as may be determined by 
mechanical and chemical resistances and pressures, we 
reckon without our host. For this substance in its 
apparent homogeneity and indifference does not more 
completely obscure its possible issues than it veils the 
unseen spirit unto which it is plastic. It is because of 
its apparent simplicity, insignificance, and characterless- 
ness that it is susceptible to the infinite potency of the 
abounding life which is to become the finite fulness 
and variety — of that same abounding life which gives 
the ether its pulsation. 

This protoplasm, as already intimated, lies next an 



188 A STUDY OF DEATH 

utter barrenness in the inorganic world — next the win- 
ter-like stillness and calm severity of natural elements 
and forces hushed and checked for some singular Na- 
tivity. All the travail and prodigal expenditure of 
Nature, all her gracious descents await here in peace- 
ful silence to catch the whispered longings of a new 
Desire, which shall call for further and more special 
ministrations. 



Ill 

We have noted that in organic specialisation there is 
a physiological insphering, incavations for the recep- 
tion into the organism itself of this descending minis- 
tration of Nature, hungry receptacles which 
vokTdon ^"a are at once tombs of decay and matrices of 
Capacity \{{ e — the dying being thus intimately brought 
next to the living. The life of the organism 
demands the sacrifice •, it not only includes death, ever 
multiplying and deepening its capacity therefor, but 
gives it a physiological character as distinguished from 
merely chemical disintegration, so that the descent 
conforms to the physiological ascent which it promotes. 
Moreover, each part of the organism thus nourished 
suffers disintegration for its own functioning, and even 
during a certain period gains structural strength through 
this intimacy with death. The waves of psychical as- 
cent in like manner rise next to the quick deaths of 
the brain. Capacity and involution are for ascent ; 
faculty, function, all evolution, for descent. The com- 
plete physiological term for each organism is a cycle the 
curvature of which is determined by the limit of capacity. 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 189 



IV 

When Euripides said that what we call living is 
really dying, he expressed a truth as scientific as it 
is poetic. What is it that we especially call living ? 
Is it not our complex functioning, our development in- 
dividually and socially, something associ- 
ated with our waking hours rather than with °^j^^ s 
those of sleep, with the expenditure of en- 
ergies rather than with their expansion and absorption, 
with the exercise of trained faculties, with active hero- 
ism and passionate romance, with the contests in the 
arena, rather than with the crudeness of infancy, the 
dependency of pupilage, the inly-folded dreams of 
youth that give no outward sign, and the mimic con- 
flicts of the gymnasium and palaestra ? But wakefulness 
is mortal exhaustion — functioning is a release of ten- 
sion, like that of a watch which serves as time-keeper 
only when it is "running down." No w T ork is done 
save by bodies that fall or in some way give up poten- 
tial energy ; all development or unfolding — what we 
call evolution — is a descent. We know the tree by its 
fruits, but inflorescence and fruition, beginning from 
arrested nutrition, belong to the falling life, to its dim- 
inution. 

Expression, all definite and visible manifestation, is 
a witnessing — a martyrdom. Evaporation becomes in- 
visible, but we see the descending rain, the flowing 
stream, the crystalline ice : contraction, solidification, 
and fixity of structure show the degrees of falling. In 
the material world these processes of descent are most 



190 A STUDY OF DEATH 

in evidence ; and their precipitate — what is known to 
us as dead matter — is an ever-present object of vision 
and touch, inert, resistant. Therefore it is that gravi- 
tation, which is the physical symbol of death, seems to 
us the prime universal force, and weight is made the 
measure of value to the disparagement of levity, being 
associated also with importance and impressiveness. 
The root of the Hebrew word for glory signifies heavi- 
ness. Solidity and stability bear down upon us with 
a like emphasis of force and pressure, becoming also 
the basis of confidence and firm support. So Death 
which draws us down becomes a prop against descent, 
the means of protection and fortification against his 
ruinous assault. 

Mechanical work, like the functioning of living or- 
ganisms, is made to depend upon this "dying fall." 
We accumulate gravitation by damming a stream, bar- 
ring and accumulating its gravity, and then permit its 
operation as a driving force. We confine the tension of 
steam and then release it, regulating the escapement 
to suit our purpose. We even imitate the organic 
stimulation of nutrition through waste, as in the electric 
dynamo the reinforcement of the tension is increased 
by the larger outlet in expenditure. 

The record of human history is a Book of Martyrs ; 
the vista is lined with ruins. The beginnings of all 
races are lost to view. The biographer of eminent 
men searches in vain for traces of the child that is 
" father to the man." Our own first years are hidden 
in oblivion. The fountain of youth eludes discovery, 
escaping even contemporaneous observation. Our 
present is known to us only as it passes. Thought, 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 191 

regarded as a definite manifestation, is a precipitate • 
and the formed mental structure, like the formed moral 
character, is a mortal framework that needs support 
against its tendency to fall, as does any material edi- 
fice ; indeed the time inevitably comes for its maturity, 
induration, fragility, and ruin — a season of autumn, 
postponed only, like the decay of the body, by nutrition 
and the stimulus of expenditure. 

Death is, then, so inseparable from life that we speak 
of one in terms of the other ; and in an external and 
objective view we must think of all action in an em- 
bodiment as finally taking upon itself the appearance 
of decrepitude and diminution — the original potency 
lost in impotence. In this view every embodiment is 
a prison-house, gradually closing in upon life with an 
absurd conclusion. 



In reality, the involution is the tension and confine- 
ment, and development the graduated release. An 
invisible reaction in the ascending movement deter- 
mines the limitation of every organism after 
its type — that is to say, in its special accord R^ t ^° m 
as part of the cosmic harmony. It is a bond 
in the expansion and fixes the bounds apparent in the 
development; it controls the method and defines the 
shape ; it establishes the curvature of the cycle com- 
pleted in descending processes of evolution. Thus 
reaction seems to dominate action — hidden in ascent 
and conspicuous in descent. The smaller cycles of 
activity illustrate this domination of reaction as does 



192 A STUDY OF DEATH 

the full term including them. Thus every expert vocal- 
ist knows that inspiration controls expiration. The elas- 
ticity is in the inbreathing, the withdrawal, the rebound, 
the undoing (as in sleep), the moment of the heart's re- 
pose — always the vanishing side, as into creative void. 
Invisibly, or subjectively, the limitation is the seal and 
commission of power, but objectively, as seen in struct- 
ure, it is a barrier — the sign of that impotence into 
which it descends ; and it is in this outward view that 
the confinement oppresses or harasses and seems like 
an entanglement full of hard knots that make us quer- 
ulous and beget in us miserable solicitudes. Here it 
is, and associated with the sense of imprisonment, that 
problems arise to vex our souls, concerning life itself — 
that life which transcends the prison and yet so seems 
to belie and contradict itself within the narrow lodge- 
ment. Thus our queries about a future life take their 
very form and color from our cloistral structure — like 
those which the Sadducees, who believed not in the 
Resurrection, put to our Lord. We are apt, like the 
Sadducees, to ignore the peculiar conditions of our 
confinement, and most of all the fact that it is spon- 
taneously determined by Life itself — by our own in- 
most and essential life, which is one with the Logos 
from the beginning. Our distorted views of the pres- 
ent as well as of a future life arise from this ignorance, 
which, as in the case of the Sadducees, is radically a 
lack of faith in Life's proper reaction — its resurgence, 
since the reaction is an ascent completed in descent, 
a flight completed in return, a repulsion finally dis- 
closed as attraction. 

Concentrating our attention upon the visible world, 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 193 

upon human development regarded externally, in re- 
lation to its environment, we are lost. Life's own in- 
sistence upon its limitation is so sure that it controls 
every form of thought and action. The closure is ef- 
fective. The limitation is special, as if holding us to 
the key-note of a particular harmony. The protoplas- 
mic basis of organic life is itself to a definite extent 
specialised, being a composite of nitrogen, carbon, hy- 
drogen, oxygen, and sulphur — plastic to the vitality 
which is to give it embodiment and meaning. The 
variety of the types developed is a diversification of the 
organic harmony, but the most advanced organisms be- 
fore at birth they emerge, each upon its own particular 
strain, must rise from the basic note, recapitulating 
ante-natally every variation of the entire gamut, each 
clothing itself in one singing-robe after another until it 
is habilitated for its proper song. This recapitulation 
is a successive involution rather than an evolution, no 
special development being allowed until the ultimate 
stage is reached. 

Our present existence is not only an allotment in 
time and space, but a special allotment ; every embodi- 
ment being a peculiar sequestration with fit and com- 
plementary environment. If we could see the entire 
synthesis in all its correspondences, the attunement 
would be manifest, and we would not think of one part 
as acting upon another, but of all as a living sym- 
phony. 



194 A STUDY OF DEATH 



VI 



In an inclusion so insulated (in order that an organ- 
ism may have, in any proper sense, individuality), so 
special, and so complex, it is inevitable that illusions 
must arise, enhancing the delights and deepening the 

anxieties and sorrows of the human pilgrim- 
imSons a § e * ^ e nave considered these illusions in 

a general way, but we desire here to show 
how directly they are associated with a definite term or 
cycle of existence, and especially with the apparent im- 
potence of its conclusion. In this connection they 
dominate our emotional and intellectual life, and they 
do this by a projection which is an inversion of the liv- 
ing truth. This inversion begins with integration itself. 
That reaction which is in the expanding and ascending 
life, and by which it becomes an involution, we project 
as an external limitation. Time* and space, which are 
only the forms of our thought, we project outside of our- 
selves, as if we were in them and not they in us. Re- 
sistance, which is inherent in repulsion, we attribute to 
outward objects. Control or restraint, essentially sub- 
jective, we regard as pressure or urgency from without. 
What is merely concomitant or complementary in our 
environment becomes in our thought the cause of 
states in us. We say we love what is lovable, whereas 
nothing is lovable save through our loving. We think 
of matter as eternal and of ourselves as having begun 
at birth — of vitality itself as something permitted for 
a brief period by suitable conditions of the elements. 
We say that life depends upon structure, and are anx- 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 195 

ious as to means of its sustentation. During a portion 
of our brief cycle we grow in stature and strength and 
knowledge, and in the full enjoyment of our heritage 
and the widening of our perspective it seems as if life 
were overflowing its bounds, and we think of ourselves 
as nourished and filled from some fund provided for 
this plenitude ; then waste gains upon repair, and the 
wide fields grow dim and gray — when it seems to us 
as if we were defrauded of all the wealth bestowed 
upon us, until at last we are reduced to nakedness 
and pass into the world of shadows. But, in reality, 
the diminution, like the increase, is subjectively deter- 
mined ; both are the visible signs of the imageless re- 
action of Life, which itself can be neither increased nor 
diminished. 



VII 

In the phenomenal world, as we know it, the appar- 
ent diminution of potential energy begins with the spe- 
cialisation of existence, with the divided living : it is 
the sign of every beginning as of every ending, and is 
more evident at every successive involution, 
as in every individual organism it is con- Lim j tatlon 

J - ° ab Initio. 

spicuous in its special development. It is 
the sign of advance in the order, in the species, in the 
individual ; but because w^e are so sensible of it as a 
barrier, in that conclusion of a term of existence which 
we ordinarily call death, we associate it with weakness 
and decrepitude, with the manifest impotence, forget- 
ting that the so patent blank wall which then closes 
in about us began its closure with our first moment, 



I9 6 A STUDY OF DEATH 

Death which at last seems an intruder is in reality, 
and in so far as we have part in it, what it was at our 
first germination and what it has been all along — the 
master inspiration, our nourishment, the storage of our 
increase, our habilitation and restoration. The masque 
he wears as last he looks upon us belies his mighty 
ofhce which he invisibly performs, clothing anew that 
which he divests, bringing to resurgence that which 
he seems to seal in with the outward hardness of stone. 
Outwardly we note the final encroachment ; inwardly 
it is our withdrawal, the vanishing curve of our brief 
cycle, a yielding to earthly elements as soft as our first 
seizure upon them — a yielding which is our release, 
such as we have so often had in sleep. 



VIII 

The sense of independence on the part of an indi- 
vidual organism is as illusive as that of dependence. 
The harmony of the world, including humanity, con- 
sists through a relation which is complementary and 
not causal. The strains blend without confu- 
Our Cosmic j Tne i nteract i on between the animal 

Partners. 

and vegetable kingdoms illustrates this blend- 
ing, as if there were oneness of action rather than in- 
teraction. It is impossible, therefore, to overestimate 
the importance of environment. Human action is thus 
conjoined with cosmic operation indissolubly and in 
an everlasting partnership. This is as true of psychical 
as of physiological manifestation, what we know as 
thought having its physical side. The cosmic comple- 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 197 

ment has its own reactions, apparent to us, indeed, only 
in such investiture as we give them, yet inseparably in- 
terwoven with that investiture — as external vibrations 
are with our hearing and seeing. In the ascent of life, 
desire seems to compel its cosmic partner, as hunger 
its victim, suspending that operation of physical and 
chemical forces proper to them outside of this dominion 
of vitality ; in its descent these forces more and more 
tend to resume their proper action, until finally they 
bring into their own domain the structure they have 
served ; their hardening of the walls of life's outward 
temple, begun for protection, has gone on to the ex- 
treme of fragility and destruction — an office as kindly 
as any they have performed. It is a partnership to the 
very end, for while essential life can suffer no diminu- 
tion, yet the individual living organism declines, the 
declension being a part of its self-imposed limitation, 
and to this falling the cosmic forces lean as readily as 
to the rising — soon themselves to be freed from their 
loving service, as is Ariel when his master escapes the 
island seclusion. The partnership is continued through 
successive generations of humanity. The descent of 
the individual has, in its service of the new generation, 
the aspect of a sacrifice in whose consummation Nature 
officiates as high priest, burning upon altars firmly built 
the last dry sheaves of the harvest. For the passing 
generation her work seems here to reach its con- 
clusion ; but she also will have her transmutations, 
and meet on new terms these vanished souls. The 
descent began in the service of new life and was con- 
tinued in that service ; its completion is for its own 
invisible ascension, as the stream, serving while it 



198 A STUDY OF DEATH 

falls, disappears only to be caught up by the sun to 
its hidden fountains in the sky. 



IX 

The integration of the individual life is a tension, an 
involution, a reaction and limitation. In its very ex- 
pansion it becomes an inclusion and confinement, in- 
sisting upon the partial, the divided living, 
through Limi- at whatever loss and exclusion. The sim- 
plest and most plastic organisms are incon- 
ceivably more potent than the most advanced and com- 
plex, the latter also having the greatest potency before 
germination, before they are aware of living. Blind 
feeling is sensitive to vibrations from which specialised 
sensation is excluded, and chemical processes depend 
upon solar rays more powerful than those to which any 
developed organism is sensible. Kinetic energy is patent 
through the latency of the potential. Thus the inclu- 
sion becomes an ever vaster exclusion, as if life ad- 
vanced through the recession of its powers, getting its 
values through distance, holding its revels aloof from 
its central fires, distilling its dews upon the cool hard 
surface from which the sun has fled. The story of life 
is from the beginning one of abnegation. Man in his 
psychical progress largely surrenders the instinct com- 
mon to all other animals, thus limiting his knowledge, 
confining it to slow and definite processes of accumu- 
lation — limiting his action also within the scope of de- 
sign and invention. He seems a mere nothing in the 
immensity of space, and the whole cycle of his earthly 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 199 

history but a moment in the world's time ; his work 
upon the earth is like writing upon the sands soon to 
be obliterated, and his conscious correspondences with 
the universe are but flashes of light in the vast dark- 
ness. Of the complex synthesis in time to which, in 
his present state, he belongs he knows very little, and 
of any other absolutely nothing. . Least of all does he 
know himself — what was his being before he appeared 
in his present form, what it shall be when he is divested 
of that form, or even what it is now in the depths 
whose movements are not registered in his conscious- 
ness, certainly not registered so that he may take note 
of the index. Indeed, the full knowledge of any living 
reality would operate like the coming of Zeus to Semele, 
shattering his intelligence. Life so turns upon itself, 
in its tropical reaction, that the very terms of his knowl- 
edge change into their opposites. Y^h^ ne stead- 
fastly gazes upon red it becomes green. He can make 
no assertion which he must not come to deny, and no 
denial that in its own completion shall not be confes- 
sion. The trope makes the terms, and makes them 
those of a paradox. 

But the loss is for gain ; the more partial is the more 
complex, the divided living the field of multiplicity and 
variety, what is mercifully excluded therefrom permit- 
ting the express and manifold excellence of the virtue 
and beauty and truth of our human life; and as the con- 
tracting rocky crust of the earth is covered with tender 
and luxuriant growth, so man, ever at the surface of 
things, has there the open and extended view, 

"The harvest of the quiet eye," 



200 A STUDY OF DEATH 

the subdued melody of earth's voices, vast and intimate 
communicability with things and forces tempered and 
brought near, and the exquisite sensibility and motion 
of the soft flesh that covers his vertebrate frame, even as 
this hard structure veils the inmost plasticity of his in- 
carnation. The social plexus, too, above the tenacious 
fabric of its unyielding laws, has the play of its gra- 
cious amenities, warm sympathies, and gentle charities. 
The psychical development relieves its own inflexible 
logic with the poetic dream and all the airy forms 
created by the imagination ; and religious faith rises 
above its firmament of creeds, transmuting the con- 
ditions of divine justice into the intimacies of a mys- 
tical incarnation, wherein it has a new motion and sen- 
sibility — the plasticity of a new principle, the oldest 
of all, hidden from the foundation of the world, the 
eternal kinship. Thus the organic kingdom, ending 
in man, is the reflection of the whole cosmic cycle back 
to God. It is a fleeting season, but it is the world's 
summer, whose express glory is due to the veiling of 
potential energy, every new limitation and hiding of 
life being a fresh and more marvellous manifestation 
of its creative power. 



It is a glory that must pass, known only as it passes. 
That defect, or what w T e deem defect, in all manifesta- 
tion from the beginning, which has led so 
Radical man > r minds to associate matter with diabo- 
lism — that disturbance of equilibrium by 
which motion is possible, so that the wheel of life may 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 201 

turn — that slight friction which, for the same possibil- 
ity, science postulates as an attribute of the ether, itself 
the elasticity of all tension ; all these are but other 
designations for that tropic reaction of life, determin- 
ing every specialised manifestation, hidden in ascent, 
expansion, and increase, and disclosed in contraction 
and descent. Brahma becomes Vishnu, the Preserver, 
and then Siva, the Destroyer. This trope is ever 
present to the mind of the Preacher: the crookedness 
that cannot be made straight, a wanting that cannot be 
numbered, the one event that happeneth to all, the 
great evil under the sun. " To everything there is a 
season ... a time to be born and a time to die ; a time 
to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 
... a time to get and a time to lose ; a time to keep and 
a time to cast away." Looking toward the inevitable 
end, the view becomes pessimistic: the limitation sug- 
gests weakness, malady, and corruption, and in human 
life is associated with a deeper frailty, the taint of 
souls, the lapse unutterable into the bottomless pit. 
"To be weak is miserable/' and this weakness, this 
goal of impotence so apparent in old age, when de- 
sire fails and the grasshopper becomes a burden, so 
seems to set vanity at the end of things that we 
wonder, in our philosophic musings, why we should 
take such pains to set straight any crookedness, to 
build up and buttress structures that must so surely 
fall, why, indeed, our cup is filled with sweets that must 
all turn bitter. The end of life thus reflects its gloom 
upon the whole course, especially in the minds of those 
whose hold upon existence is all along timid and feeble, 
and in those ages which lack faith and vitality; and 



202 A STUDY OF DEATH 

we almost envy that strong desire which in more* primi- 
tive times led men to believe in the possibility of tak- 
ing into another life their earthly possessions — wealth, 
wives, and servants — that were buried or burned with 
their bodies, confident, as the bees in making honey 
for their winter, that somehow, though the vase of life 
were broken, they might avail of its precious storage 
for death's hibernation. Better still is the faith in life's 
resurgence, for new increase, thus bringing us back to 
the fountain. 



XI 

The weakness and pains of infancy are as great as 
those of age : the latter call forth more of commisera- 
tion, because for them the relief is wholly invisible, and 
is not ours to give; the former appeal to our helpful 
sympathy, and also have help that we know 

tint™ G not °^> even as we on ty P ar tially comprehend 
their magnitude. The mother knows her own 
travail, but not that of her child, who never in his con- 
scious life will undertake a labour equal to that he must 
bear before he is born. Within what a brief period 
does he repeat from the simplest of organic forms ev- 
ery stage of a development that has taken thousands 
of years within its scope ! We have here in this reca- 
pitulation, this foreshortening of the work of ages, a 
hint of that potential energy which is greatest in the 
least specialised forms of existence — open to the Infi- 
nite. " My substance was not hid from Thee, when I 
was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the low- 
est parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my sub- 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 203 

stance yet being imperfect ; and in Thy book all my 
members were written, which in continuance were fash- 
ioned when as yet there was none of them." 

The human germ, having accomplished its ante-natal 
miracle, is brought into the light of day a helpless in- 
fant ; but though seeming a mere weakling, it has still 
before it new mountains to remove. It must wholly 
vitalise and bring under control its plastic embodi- 
ment ; must make its connections, physically and men- 
tally, with its natural and human environment ; and, in 
doing this, it must supplement the subtle architecture 
of its brain, here again repeating in a brief period what 
centuries have done for its ancestors. It cannot in- 
herit thought and speech or any experience; in all 
these it must begin at the beginning, and yet catch up 
with whatever advance has been made by its kind. 
Very little of this inconceivable burden can be borne 
for it by parents, kindred, or teachers — subjectively, 
indeed, naught of it; in arbitrary symbolism the signs 
are held out to the child, but the latter must give these 
their significance. The invisible power of life which 
shaped its organism, already limited and veiled by that 
organism, is still called upon to perform miracles. Out- 
wardly there is no sign of this travail, and when it is 
greatest the child is nourished with milk, and spends 
most of its time in sleep ; indeed, the tender plasticity 
is the essential condition of the miracle. 



204 A STUDY OF DEATH 



XII 



The season of infancy has much in common with 
that of age, though so different are these in our 
thought of them. The burden of the child is invisible, 
not apparent in consciousness, its gravity being hid- 
den in the expansion which is an uplifting tension ; in 
age the gravity is disclosed and shown as oppressive 
weight. The jaded sensibility of age toys with the 
objects of its diminished desire, simulating the dalli- 
ance and shy coquetry of the child's first contact with 
the world. The new desire has pain, as the old has 
weariness, and we see the children, thrust upon this 
earthly coast as by the impulse of a tide at 
Desire begins - ts fl ooc j vet crv i n or because they have come, 

in Aversion. ' J J & J 

and seeming to question if they will stay. 
How coyly do they take their places at life's feast, as 
if nibbling at some possibly treacherous bait with 
dainty and quickly surfeited appetite ! Never does 
sweet milk sour so quickly as the mother's in the gorge 
of her nursling; and the regurgitation is alike promi- 
nent in Shakespeare's portrayal of the infant and in 
Swedenborg's vision of heavenly innocents. The un- 
conscious desire, with its sure wisdom, though it lacks 
the eagerness of an acquired taste, of an appetite that 
has grown by what it has fed on, has yet a hidden vio- 
lence ; but because the sensibility is new and fresh, its 
first contacts with an untried world are attended by 
pain and irritation and the difficulty of crudeness, as 
newly awakened eyes suffer the dawn, seeming to shun 
what they await. The bold venture is outwardly shy 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 205 

and full of a play in which repulsion seems primary 
rather than attraction. The seizure begins with an 
open hand that would seem about to put aside its 
object before grasping it, even as it ends in relaxation, 
in the rejection of its fulness. 

Thus, though childhood is so postulant, asking for 
all things, yet the first responses to its prayers are ac- 
cepted with an averted face, as of those who are leaving 
the world instead of those who are taking it — the cur- 
vature of departure being the same at the beginning of 
the cycle as at the end. The cup of life has no more 
of bitterness in its dregs than there is in its first relish. 

Novelty excites nausea as does satiety; a wholly 
new sensation or situation produces a kind of dizziness 
and bewilderment. The taste for any food, as well as 
for stimulants and narcotics, must be acquired, and a 
different zone becomes compatible only through ac- 
climatisation. Precisely this arrangement of harmony 
which we enter into at birth has never been ours be- 
fore, and there is a sense of discord at first and the at- 
tunement is gradual ; a chaotic disturbance precedes 
the cosmic agreeableness. We are at first in the strange 
situation of the blind man whose sight has been sud- 
denly restored — at a loss, even as one suddenly deprived 
of sight. Hence the feeling of sane restfulness that 
comes from familiarity. We are pilgrims in the far 
country and must be naturalised. We observe, if we 
do not remember, the child's timid aversion to a new 
face or a strange garment, and in the beginning all out- 
ward shapes are rude disguises — even all that is stim- 
ulant and helpful being first seen as hostile, and only 
slowly disclosing the intimate friendliness. 



2o6 A STUDY OF DEATH 



XIII 



Pathology begins with existence, showing the as- 
pects of malady in nascent conditions, as might be ex- 
pected, since the seed must die for its own abundance. 
Our physical functioning results not only in 
thoiogy*" waste but in the actual precipitation of a 
poison, which adds malignancy to weariness. 
The first stage of nutrition is toxic, the stomach produc- 
ing peptones, whose poison is eliminated by the liver, 
itself the cause of sweetness and the seat of melancholy. 
Even medicine relieves disease by virtue of its bitter- 
ness, and by every moment tasting death our life is 
forever renewed, while we smile contempt at the angel 
we have wrestled with for his blessing. 

Difficulty, resistance, disturbance, pain — whatever 
names we give to the limitation upon which we enter — 
belong to life, to its proper reaction from the begin- 
ning, and are the basis of a normal pathology. Nas- 
cent and renascent life is in the line of resistance, is in 
its expansion aware of its bond, and involves disease. 
Comparing its repulsion to what in physics we call the 
centrifugal force, we think of it as resisted by attrac- 
tion and as thus brought into flexion ; but, really, the 
repulsion is from the first an attraction, and so a flex- 
ion at every point of the cycle, or vibration. The ex- 
pansion involves the tension, and therefore it is that it 
becomes confinement. 

The reaction is constant through the whole term of 
existence — the basis of endless change and infinite 
variability; forever interrupting the tendency of habit, 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 207 

which is toward stability, uniformity, and facility, and 
introducing the hostile, alien elements, dissociable for 
new association. For every sign of the zodiac there is 
some new labor ; and in this travail all outward assist- 
ance involves resistance. The latent inward potency 
is outwardly maintained in the deepening of capacity, 
whose tension is buoyant, lifting as it deepens. But in 
the aspiration every movement is a spurning of what it 
meets, contempt of what it embraces, and though life 
makes terms with its adversary quickly, they are terms 
of reconciliation whose first and last import is one of 
disdain. We turn with weariness from Day to Night, 
and at dawn smite with rosy arrows the breast that has 
renewed our strength. The children turn against the 
parents, truants from home and at enmity with" teachers 
and nurses. The Lord of Life brings not peace but a 
sword," setting a man at variance against his father, and 
a daughter against her mother," so that a man's foes 
shall be of his own household. Normal like abnormal 
pathology has its shocks and chills, its fevers and its an- 
gers — its pool of Bethesda, whose waters are troubled by 
the Angel of Deaths who is invisibly the Angel of Life. 
The strongest passion of animal life is the beginning 
of physical death, and we are not wholly amiss in call- 
ing its first appearance a " love-sickness," for what is 
there so full of pains and rages and fevers ? It is the 
first note of command issued by That which is to Come, 
calling for the sacrificial festival and procession, for the 
Passing of the Present, bedecking every barge upon 
the stream with bright-coloured garlands, with music 
and dancing, so that no earthly vesture can vie with 
the gaiety of this mortal habit. 



208 A STUDY OF DEATH 

Death, as the end of life, seems especially the time 
of parting ; but a closer intimacy is broken by birth, 
and every crisis of our existence is home-breaking as 
well as home-making. The very specialisation of life — 
cosmic, individual, and social — is, as we have seen, 
through division, every division or involution being a 
new manifestation of reaction, and always a marvellous 
surprise. In the individual the germ becomes organ and 
the organ function, and so the stream runs away from 
its fountain. If it were a perpetual cycle it would still 
be through waves ascending and descending ; the in- 
tegration being forever renewed through disintegration. 
In such organic life as we know the term is limited, 
with constant alternation of increase and expenditure ; 
but a point is reached where nutrition is checked, and 
waste gains upon reparation — the line of demarcation 
between youth and age. 



XIV 

The burdens and pains of plastic childhood are 
quite hidden, not only from outward observation but 
from consciousness itself. The ascent is not like the 
climbing of the Hill of Difficulty, but rather like a 
translation into the heavens, the burden and difficulty 
being included, as if they were participant 
E Chiidhood 0f * n tne exa ^ tat i° n J upborne by some invisible 
power. The expansion is at the same time 
a withdrawing and an imperative absorption. Hence 
the quaint mastery of childhood, its native hauteur, its 
sublime sefishness. It is said by those who have stud- 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 209 

ied the child's ways of thinking, that he regards aged 
people as in the state of becoming little ones. We, 
on the other hand, looking at children's faces, seem to 
see beyond them the abysmal realm of the Ancient of 
Days. How swiftly have their softly fashioned limbs 
scaled the old battlements ! Ruddier and stronger than 
the dawn, fresher than the spring-time, older than the 
stars, they spring forever from the loins of the Eternal, 
and no visible constellations may yield their true horo- 
scope. 

The ancient symbolism representing the apparent 
movement of the sun through the twelve signs of the 
Zodiac (corresponding to the twelve labours of Her- 
acles) is true also in its application to the cycle of a 
human life. First the solar hero is lifted by the help 
of Aries and Cancer in his ascending movement, reach- 
ing finally the summer solstice in the House of the 
Lion ; then gently declining into the arms of the Vir- 
gin, he is held for a time in the pause of Libra ; and 
finally, having received the sting of the Scorpion and 
the arrows of the Archer, he passes through the trope 
of Capricorn into the watery region of Aquarius and 
Pisces — the signs of dissolution. 

The human child, like the infant Heracles, avails of 
the heavenly powers with which it is secretly allied, be- 
ing for a time withheld in its true kingdom, which is 
not of this world. For childhood Time itself is an in- 
finite expansion, a verisimilitude of Eternity ; the reac- 
tion of tender puissance is quick and mighty, so that 
its release is as ready as its seizure, and the aged 
Reaper with the scythe is not needed to make sure 
the severance, as he is for them that are inveterately 



210 A STUDY OF DEATH 

rooted in the earthly soil. The strain of buoyancy is 
also its restraint, herein also showing the reaction in a 
sure inhibition, a marvellous continence. 

Childhood, as measured by outward observation, is 
very brief, but in the calendar of the individual con- 
sciousness it transcends all seasons, and is indeed im- 
measurable. It is sacred and inviolate, guarded from 
the use and waste of expenditure, keeping still the se- 
cret of its deathless power, while most including and 
hiding death. It is a flame which consumes not — the 
flame of increase. The heavenly foundations are laid 
of life's temple, which rises like an exhalation in un- 
sullied purity. 



XV 

But this wholeness is an integration which rises above 

ruins, and while itself inviolable is a resistless violence 

and ravishment. It takes all and gives nothing. Its 

„, dominion is greatest when it is most with- 

The & 

Outward drawn from earthly contacts, when its walls 

Quickening. f . .. ' . . 

are soft as clouds, and when as yet its vo- 
racity shows no teeth for crushing and no sting for 
wounding. All signs of conflict are hidden in this su- 
preme self -centring absorption, this primal storage. 
The quickness of life, also, is veiled beneath the out- 
ward aspect of inertia and somnolence. 

Achilles is still among the maidens, like one of 
them, and wearing their garments ; the swiftness of 
his feet is not yet disclosed, and for him neither spear 
nor shield has yet been fashioned. 

The time comes when the limit of capacity is reached, 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 211 

when the invisible quickness becomes an outward quick- 
ening, as when the lightning that has been hidden in the 
depths of the tense cloud leaps from its lair and breaks 
the heavenly silence. It is as when the bow has been 
drawn to its full tension and is released for the other 
half of its vibration, speeding the arrow. 

We have, in another chapter, considered those " crit- 
ical moments " in all development, inorganic and or- 
ganic, which Mr. N. S. Shaler, in his Intei'p relation of 
Nature, has treated with luminous significance. These 
belong not only to every complete cycle, but also to 
every living moment, which has its two sides — of ten- 
sion and release. When the limit of tension is reached 
the reaction is manifest in the abrupt action which 
seems explosive in the escape. There is this limit to 
the involution of every type of existence ; and it is also 
indicated in every diverse plane of the same existence 
and in every particular process. In purely physical 
phenomena it is more conspicuous, as in the sudden 
precipitation of a shower or in a bolt of lightning. In 
the organic world there is greater suspension and more 
modulated strain. We do, indeed, note the quick out- 
burst of a flower, the mark of hysterical violence in 
laughter and sobbing and in a passionate word or act ; 
but for the most part temper disguises the tempest, 
and the critical point escapes notice. Yet every mo- 
tion, every word, every thought, marks this sudden ac- 
cess, whereby, indeed, they become motion, word, and 
thought. There is in every process the point of ab- 
rupt precipitation, though the movement break as qui- 
etly as the surf of a summer sea, or progress in rhyth- 
mic harmony like the more distant waves, whose rupture 



212 A STUDY OF DEATH 

is hidden in their fluxion. There is the gradual reinforce- 
ment, the movement itself becoming momentum, to the 
point of excess ; in youth the expenditure, or release, is 
an overflow, an invisible exhalation, while the hard- 
ened walls of age resist and are broken. In human 
affairs there are crises so sudden as to be unanticipated 
in the slow increment of movements leading up to them. 
The masterly practical man is quick to see the first 
signs of the storm before it breaks. Hence the em- 
phasis of opportunity, the taking of the tide at its flood. 
In every great movement there is a storm-centre, tow- 
ard which all the elements are drawn; the demand is 
exhaustive ; it is as if the spirit of the time were mar- 
shalling his hosts for an issue known only to him, 
crowding expectancy, accumulating enthusiasm to fanat- 
ic excess, overcharging the capacities engaged. Then 
suddenly the meaning of the movement is known, as if 
certified by the announcement of angelic choirs, whose 
theme becomes thenceforth the burden of human speech 
and song ; the passion is expressed in the prodigality 
of its blossoming, which speedily becomes the prodi- 
gality of ruin. What matters it if the blossoms are 
swept away by the wind and rain, so the fruit is set ; if 
the walls of the temple fall, so the Presence that filled 
the temple is glorified ; or even if the entire structure 
of a civilisation is destroyed, so the race is reborn ! 
There is no outward explication of such crises ; it is 
upon the environment that the relentless demand has 
been made ; it is the external structure that has yielded 
to the transformation of creative life. 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 213 



XVI 

Life so insists upon integration — makes such de- 
mands for it in every involution — that we come to look 
upon the temple, thus wondrously fashioned and at 
such costly sacrifice, as its end ; but the 
Lord, looking thereupon, saith : " Not one ®* P r^ d 
stone shall stand upon another." The ex- 
pression of the life which shaped the structure is possi- 
ble only through disintegration. Things high and holy 
are for brokenness and descent, whereby their essential 
quality is manifested. Life ascends to that point from 
which it may most expressively fall. 

Childhood is the fountain in the sky, lifted thither by 
its vital tension, and there permitted an unadulterated 
storage ; in its exaltation an image of primal holiness, 
an unmoral innocence, not knowing evil as distinct 
from good. But when the time comes for it to descend 
into earthly channels and contacts — this is the other 
side of life, the contraction of its sphere, wherein it loses 
its translucent and crystalline purity. Yet it is at this 
turning-point that the individual human life enters upon 
its fruition, its summer, as if in the wanton prodigality 
of its functioning — its action and its passion — it would 
express all the wonder and glory hitherto hidden. It 
is a trope, a change as remarkable as that which befell 
the planet when its self-luminous orb became opaque 
and its barrens blossomed into the luxuriant life which 
expresses the flaming wonder they had veiled. Thus 
life falls into its special excellence, having thus also the 
special defects of its excellences. A special and con- 



214 A STUDY OF DEATH 

sciously recognised pathology is developed which even 
in its normal course has its fevers of excess and its 
chills of failure. There is specific good and specific 
evil after the fall, and seen as distinct in a moral sense. 
In a period of fruition we distinguish between fruits, 
and guard against the poisonous ; we especially con- 
sider consequences. Thus virtues are defined by ends. 
In a delicately poised order, of complexly interdepend- 
ent relations, conscience has its culture, emphasising 
special control and solicitude. Prudence and temper- 
ance are appreciated as supports, maintaining integrity 
in a world where all things are falling and where riot- 
ous waste is so conspicuous. 



XVII 

As we have seen, in our consideration of the progres- 
sive specialisation of life, the suspense and tempera- 
ment are more apparent at every successive 

Maturity. ,_. . . . 

stage. The species have continuance ; the 
wave is caught in falling, and there is the undulatory 
procession of generations. Man dwells upon the earth, 
and this dwelling has new and stronger meaning with 
the advance of civilisation; so the moral aspect of hu- 
man society is deepened from age to age in a constant- 
ly increasing conservatism. As in mechanics gravita- 
tion is made to promote levitation, so even the ruins of 
civilisations contribute to the greater permanence of 
societies that inherit their virtues. The spiritual exal- 
tation of the Hebrew, the art of Greece, the jurispru- 
dence of Rome, though they could not save from fall- 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 215 

ing the structures in which they were originally en- 
shrined, have become elements of sustaining power in 
the structural development of modern social life. 

The individual also has the advantage of this sus- 
tained undulation at the noontide height of maturity, 
the prolongation of which is an extended plateau hiding 
from vision the precipitous declivity. He does not see 
in fruitfulness the signs of decay or how much of do- 
minion he has surrendered for his conscious mastery. 
He is not sensible of the curvature fixed by his limita- 
tion ; he has the habit of walking, forgetting that there 
is falling in his erect progression — the habit of speech, 
unfaltering, of facile thought and action ; he is con- 
scious of rectitude, and he glories in his strength and 
in the far-reaching utilities of domestic and civic func- 
tions. Like the river in the full volume of its progress, 
he possesses and enriches the plain. He rejoices in 
the full splendour of summer, in the decency and dig- 
nity of ample investiture. The green slow 7 ly turns to 
golden, first the blades, then the ear upon the silken- 
tasselled stalk, then the full corn in the ear. Surely the 
value of life is expressed in its harvests, and in the 
west is gathered all the wealth of the w r orld; there are 
the golden fruits of the Hesperides. These gardens 
lie, indeed, on the verge of Pluto's realm ; but man in 
his full strength does not suspect how far the Dark 
King ventures inland. The streams, of course, belong 
to this invader, all lapsing Letheward, and his hands 
stretch forth in the darkness of night and the chill of 
winter • but Persephone, plucking flowers, found him 
ere the shades had fallen upon the fields of Enna ; 
Adam and Eve heard the voice proclaiming him among 



216 A STUDY OF DEATH 

the trees of Eden, just in the cool of the day ; and the 
bright-crested aspiring serpent who had denied death 
slunk away among the dry, rustling leaves to his still 
confessional. All climbing things deny him, but the 
very outburst of their denial is into the leaf and flower 
and fruit that in their fall shall confess him. Yet is he 
patient, letting the fruit slowly ripen. He permits the 
long-withholding of childhood from the summer heat, 
waits through the long noon of manhood, and even gives 
old age a staff against too swift decline. The prolon- 
gation of maturity is itself a support to the declining 
years of a passing generation, while it gives sustenance 
and protection to helpless childhood and tutelage to 
adolescence. 

This suspense, in every period of human life, empha- 
sises the value and importance of that life, considered 
solely in its terrestrial relations. Mr. John Fiske, in 
showing that the prolongation of human infancy has 
been one of the principal factors in the progress of the 
race, made a novel and original contribution to the sci- 
ence of sociology. But if the weakness and depend- 
ence of childhood, evoking loving care and sympathy, 
counts for so much, how much more must be accred- 
ited to the invisible might of childhood as the hope of 
the world. During this period of protection, while it is 
establishing its cerebral channels of communication 
with the outside world, it is at the same time, by its 
withholding from that world, allowed freedom for ex- 
pansion, for the deepening of its capacity, for that ex- 
alted tension which society has come to recognise as 
the mightiest of its inspirations. This mystical appre- 
hension of childhood becomes the poefs assertion and 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 217 

the popular intuition ; and, since it regards elements 
not open to observation, it is a view falling outside the 
scientific scrutiny that regards only the stimulation of 
environment, the nutritive processes involved, and the 
resultant structural development. "What is this won- 
drous font of power ?" asks science. " Is it anything 
more than a fund of vital energy dependent upon nu- 
trition for its storage ?" In return, we ask, what is it 
at any stage of its outward development? At what 
point in the stream does this transcendent, invisible 
power which gives human life its spiritual meaning en- 
ter, if it is not at the fountain ? It is not an acquisi- 
tion. If we admit it into our view of human existence 
as a whole, we must include it from the beginning. 

Indeed, as we have seen, this involution which we 
know as childhood is at the fountain something that it 
is not in the stream. Its expression is also its veiling. 
" It is not as it hath been of yore," the poet complains. 
A glamour is gone that never comes again, it 

"... fades into the light of common day." 

The virginal sense of things first seen ; the surprise of 
fragrance; the native feeling of primal dawns, of the 
heavenly azure, of woods and streams, of haunting 
shadows and whispering winds, we cannot recall. The 
steps that halted then are hurried now, following well- 
worn paths and yet lost in them. The storage of 
strength against strain, of reparation against waste, 
is not like that primal storage, which had its basis in 
a hunger that was not want. No after-sleep is like the 
sleep of the infant, which is not measured to meet a 
special weariness, but is rather the sign of the hidden 



218 A STUDY OF DEATH 

quickness of life in its infolding, as wakefulness is of 
the quick unfolding, growing into the insomnia of old 
age. Yet the nutrition and sleep of adolescence and 
maturity are special infoldings, whereby the haste of 
the consuming flame is retarded and the plasticity of 
childhood is in some degree renewed, though it cannot 
be wholly regained ; and waste and weariness induce 
and stimulate these processes of renewal. 

This period of maturity, sustained by constant rein- 
forcement of energy, is far remote from childhood, but 
it is true of the man as of the youth, that he, though he 

"... daily farther from the East 
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 
And by the vision splendid 
Is on his way attended," 

and this vision illumines his ripe knowledge and gives 
its own transcendent meaning to all he does. 



XVIII 

The suspense is in some measure maintained in the 
period of decline. The urgency of physical passion is 
spent and the intense strain of effort is relaxed ; in the 
golden silence, beneath all the easy garru- 
lousness, contemplation is deepened, undis- 
turbed by passionate interest. The last juice expressed 
from the vine is unutterably rich. Memory seems 
weaker, but it is busy at the old font. The flame. of 
life which burned only green in the spring-time bursts 
forth into many brilliant autumnal colors, as if death 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 219 

had more gaiety than birth. Age seems to be a tak- 
ing on anew of childhood, but with this difference — 
that the reaction awaits some other sphering of the 
withdrawn life. Instead of the aversion which ends in 
seizure there is the lingering clasp of cherished things 
about to be released — love mingling with the weari- 
ness, so that the final human repentance of the visible 
world is unlike that of any other species in its regret- 
ful, backward glance of farewell. In man alone does 
love conquer the strong animal instinct which insists 
upon solitude and utter aversion of the face in death. 



XIX 

The urgency of the movement, hidden in the ascent 
of life, is outwardly conspicuous in the descent. There 
is more of death and destruction at the beginning than 
at the end j the unconsuming flame is most intense, 
though there is no smoke nor conflagration. 
It is with Death as with Evil — neither is -r. The 

Disarray. 

apparent to us, under its name, in the up- 
lifting tension of life, which most completely includes 
both. The flame is tropical, and when it turns it rends ; 
its reaction is disclosed as a wasting consumption. In 
all germinant organisms we note the hidden quickness 
of the tender infolding life, and in the unfolding an 
outward quickening in blossom and song and radiant 
plumage, when, with the prophecy of new life to come 
in the ripening grain, the fertilisation of flowers, the 
mating of the birds, and the myriad forms of love-life 
in the whole realm of animate Nature, another move- 



220 A STUDY OF DEATH 

ment begins, hurrying into flight, which comes at length 
to have in it a suggestion of disorder and disarray. The 
song sung by the weird Sisters, when they unravel 
their slowly woven web, has reckless, dissolute notes. 
The ascendant movement of life, with its hidden quick- 
ness, its virginal restraint, seems outwardly slow, and 
has outwardly also the aspect of ease and buoyant rest, 
because the travail of its climbing is mainly borne by 
unseen powers ; but, in the descent, it would almost 
seem that these benignant powers, breaking through 
the veil, had suffered a transformation and become de- 
structive foes, losing their coy reticence and playful 
ease, and were striding forth in open, undisguised vio- 
lence, and with indecorous haste were flinging their 
garments to the winds, bringing all things to naked- 
ness, profaning all shrines, ravishing all Beauty, brand- 
ing Plenty as wantonness, and Accomplishment as van- 
ity. What was, in the nascent organism, abundant, 
graceful ease and rhythmic overflow, nourished from 
hidden sources, becomes, in the decay of the organism, 
a feverish excess, a hectic waste. It is the trope of 
Capricorn, and the pagan imagination was easily in- 
fected by its disturbance ; the followers of Pan clothed 
themselves with goat-skins, and grinning satyrs min- 
gled in the wild rout. 

For man as for all other organisms there is, in the 
visible course of things, the lax and ragged conclusion 
—the broken golden bowl at the fountain and the 
wheel broken at the cistern. The fountain cannot re- 
fuse to become the stream, nor the stream to pass; 
any arrest of the descending movement only accumu- 
lates disturbance and hastens the ruin. It is the bitter- 



ASCENT AND DESCENT OF LIFE 221 

ness of Dead Seas that they have no outlet. The un- 
broken storage of the miser becomes itself corruption. 
The belief of Heraclitus in the eternal flux of things 
must somehow be reconciled with Plato's plea for sta- 
bility through a harmony that is eternal. 

There is no ethical resolution of the problem ; there 
is indeed no problem save of our own making. The 
issues of life have their spontaneous reconcilement, be- 
cause Life itself is eternal. There is in that life a 
principle which is creative ; which is as unmoral as 
is Childhood, because it transcends morality ; which 
makes not for mere rectitude, but for righteousness, not 
for betterment merely, but for renewal ; which does not 
mend the Prodigal's rags, but brings him home. 



FOURTH BOOK 
DEATH UNMASQUED 



CHAPTER I 
A SINGULAR REVELATION 



IN every system known to us some singular and 
striking phenomenon presents itself — a certain 
insistent strain of the harmony, not easily explained, 
and in many cases remaining forever an 
insoluble mystery. The Milky Way, the ' k ^ he 
Gulf Stream, the Trade Winds, the current 
that rules the magnetic needle, are such phenomena in 
the physical world. In physiology the quickening and 
dominant power of germ-cells discloses to the student 
the plasmic Milky Way of organic life. The Dream 
impresses us as a similar mystery in psychical mani- 
festation. Thus singular and inexplicable, in the cur- 
rents of human history, is that one of them which de- 
termined the Hebrew destiny. 

The Gentile, or pagan, races of the ancient world 
accomplished outward integrity, or completeness, in 
the development of art, science, and polity ; they had 
humane literature and elaborate religious ritual. The 
Hebrew 7 was pre-eminently the broken man. Those 
prophecies which w r e usually regard as wholly Messi- 
anic were first of all applicable to Israel. He is the 
one spoken of by Isaiah as " a root out of a dry ground : 



226 A STUDY OF DEATH 

he hath no form nor comeliness ; and when we see him 
there is no beauty that we should desire him. He was 
despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows, and 
acquainted with grief. . . . He w r as wounded for our 
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities : the 
chastisement of our peace was upon him ; and with his 
stripes we are healed." All this, consummated in the 
person of the Christ, pertained to the race whence he 
sprang. For the Hebrew the promise of the rose pre- 
sumed a desert. " Look unto the rock whence ye were 
hewn," says the prophet, " and to the hole of the pit 
whence ye were digged. Look unto Abraham, your 
father, and unto Sarah that bare you." In Abraham's 
seed all nations were to be blessed ; but how sugges- 
tive in this primitive gospel is the emphasis upon the 
sterility of Sarah, and, after the birth of Isaac, upon 
Abraham's renunciation of him, completed in the 
heart, though the hand stretched forth to slay was 
stayed ! 

Always in the history of this race, despised above all 
others yet above all others glorified, Canaan must 
have its prelude in the wilderness ; some bitter tribula- 
tion like that of the Egyptian bondage lies ever in the 
background. Canaan itself — the land flowing with milk 
and honey — was a field of terrible carnage, possessed 
only after many fierce battles, and with difficulty main- 
tained, lying between Assyria and Egypt as between an 
upper and nether millstone. Its captive children were 
sold in every slave-market of the Mediterranean. The 
kingdom established by David was short-lived ; in the 
generation succeeding Solomon it was broken in pieces, 
and ten of the twelve tribes soon disappeared so com- 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 227 

pletely from view that their fate has become a histori- 
cal enigma. The remaining tribes of Judah and Ben- 
jamin, harassed for several generations by foreign and 
intestine wars, were carried away in captivity to Baby- 
lon, from w T hich a small remnant returned to rebuild 
the ruined temple and rescue from oblivion the pre- 
cious records of the past. 

It was after this captivity that the more gracious as- 
pects of the Mosaic law T were emphasised, and there 
arose the sect of the Pharisees, in its origin representing 
the loftiest spiritual ideal ; for the first time formulat- 
ing the belief in a resurrection ; and, in the institution 
of synagogue worship throughout Palestine, establish- 
ing the simplest form of religious liberty ever known 
upon the earth. 

After every black night in Jewish history there was 
some such glorious morning. It is true that in our 
Lord's time Pharisaism, especially in Jerusalem, had 
degenerated into a habit of formal righteousness, but 
the simple religious life in the country villages was to 
some extent maintained, and here it was that the mere 
remnant of a remnant aw r aited the blossoming of a 
people's hope. 

At the birth of Christ his country was reduced to 
the position of an insignificant province of the Roman 
Empire, and his people were dispersed throughout the 
then known world. Into the deepest darkness shone 
the star of Bethlehem. 

Other races seem to have grown corrupt within their 
outwardly completed structures. The Hebrew, out- 
wardly broken, was inwardly made whole in the beauty 
of holiness. Many were called but few were chosen ; 



228 A STUDY OF DEATH 

and it is not strange that in this trial by fire there was 
so large a refusal of dross, and that only in the hearts 
of a faithful few was a destiny so singular maintained 
and cherished to its final consummation. 



II 

Looking back from the eminence of our Aryan civil- 
isation, and considering what different races have con- 
tributed thereto, we behold this one vaulting, flame- 
fretted arch, distinct from and overreaching 

Flame* a ^ otners - It is a sacred flame — how dread 
even to the Hebrews, who in the wilderness 
saw it as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by 
night, and would fain have fled from its awful illumi- 
nation back to the flesh-pots of Egypt ! With what nat- 
ural yearning toward some familiar human imagination 
they moulded the golden calf, even at the bidding of 
Aaron, while Moses was with God in the mount in the 
midst of the cloud which was the glory of the Lord, 
and the sight of w r hich was like devouring fire. 

Repellent also to all men is this sacred flame, and it 
is with serene satisfaction that our Western thought 
turns to " the glory which was Greece and the grandeur 
that was Rome" — to those elements in the fabric of 
our modern life which are of classic origin, and which 
commend themselves to our esteem as associated with 
aesthetic development, with intellectual culture, with 
ethical stability, and with the pride of human accom- 
plishment, attested by monuments whose ruins seem 
to us more hospitable than do the tents of Shem, or 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 229 

that holy tabernacle built by the descendants of the 
Bedouin patriarch, in which dwelt the flaming Pres- 
ence. 

Nevertheless, this arch of fire transcends all others 
in our spiritual temple, surpassing all earthly splen- 
dours ; it is the illumination of our heavenly heritage, 
from a promise uttered to man in some earlier and 
deeper sleep than fell upon Abraham — a promise an- 
swering to the inmost desire of the human heart. The 
outward aversion from it has recourse in an irresistible 
attraction thereto. The glory of the Lord, shining in 
another face than that of Moses, subdued all hearts, 
and the world eagerly ran after that from which it had 
seemed to be running away. 



Ill 

The tendency toward structural completeness is nat- 
ural and wholesome ; it is development in human ex- 
istence as it is in the entire cosmos. It is 
itself a breaking, but a breaking into wholes, ^elkurf 
even in the minutest molecules. The frac- 
tions of living Nature are themselves integers. Form 
and comeliness are cosmic distinctions. The bride is 
arrayed for her lord. The lack of proper vestment, 
like deformity, is a cause for shame and disappoint- 
ment. Nakedness is clothed upon. The more sacred 
the flame, the more carefully it is hidden, and the 
holiest passion is veiled. Life's revels are masqued, 
and the vesture is manifold ; this is the way of all 
prodigal sons, yet the fact that it ends in raggedness 



2$e A STUDY OF DEATH 

and ruin is Nature's confession that the Life is more 
than meat and the body than raiment. 

This truth which Nature confesses at the end of 
things, in articulo mortis, the Lord disclosed at the 
fountain, as the spiritual principle of life. Thus was 
the inclusion of death in life illustrated, in his personal 
career upon earth, by his denial of those things which 
in the natural course of human lives are accounted 
most desirable. He renounced without denunciation. 
He never married, but marriage he blessed. He sought 
not earthly honours, possessions, "troops of friends," 
but to these in themselves he attached no blame ; he 
counselled his disciples to make friends of even the 
mammon of unrighteousness. In saying that Mary 
had chosen the good part there was no reflection upon 
Martha. He was not an ascetic ; his very divestiture 
was abundantly vital. As Nature, insisting upon death, 
yet values not the waste and ruin but rather refuses 
them, driving them out of sight with the violence of 
her winter winds and utterly consuming them in the 
white heat of her frost, so the Lord reckoned not with 
the dead while he glorified Death. "Let the dead 
bury its dead.'" He was at one with Nature, who lays 
such emphasis on death, because through death is her 
resurrection ; but the truth in his word was a spiritual 
principle transcending that expressed in the apparently 
closed circles of all natural procession ; it revealed 
the reality hidden beneath the appearance from the 
foundation of the world. 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 231 



IV 

In the natural course of things man sees good and 
evil apart, taking the one with delight, succumbing to 
the other as inevitable. He rejoices in the morning, 
but night wins acceptance because of his weariness, 
which is a kind of forced repentance of the _ T , , 

*• Natural and 

day; and the deeper night of death over- Spiritual 

, . . , , " ^1^1 Repentance. 

powers him in the same way, so that he 
seems in a natural repentance to turn from the world 
to his confessional. He is overcome of evil. But the 
Lord said, " Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil 
with good." Again he said, " Resist not evil." Now, 
he well knew that as in time past so in all time to come 
the phenomenal conflict with evil must continue. In 
the prayer he taught to his disciples were the petitions 
" Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." 
He was not enjoining upon men, in the practical con- 
flict of life, to confound evil with good. He might as 
well have bid them confound light with darkness. 
Tares were not wheat, though they grow together and 
must continue to grow together until the harvest. 
What he announced was a spiritual principle touching 
the reality beneath the phenomenal struggle. It is as 
if he had said : " Evil and Good as seen by you appear 
separate and irreconcilable, because of the limitation 
of your vision and of your existence ; your thought and 
care and effort are engaged in a conflict whose terms 
and conditions you cannot evade, and yet no man by 
thinking or striving can add one cubit to his stature ; 
the visible limitation remains \ and the conclusion of the 



232 A STUDY OF DEATH 

struggle is the apparent triumph of Evil — even as the 
grave swallows up all that live and Death seems the Con- 
queror. In this partial view, this finitude, this closed 
circle which you call the course of nature, you are like 
prisoners and captives, accepting evil as slaves accept 
the lash of a taskmaster. But I show you a hidden 
truth, masqued and disguised by visible Nature — a di- 
vine way, whereby as children and not as servants you 
shall accept Death and Evil, including and comprehend- 
ing them in that true knowledge of the Father and the 
Son which is eternal life, in its spiritual meaning. Out- 
wardly there is the striving in narrow ways, seeking ever 
narrower and straighter, but inwardly there is peace and 
reconcilement. This is faith in the abounding life that 
forever springs freshly from its fountain ; herein is the 
willing repentance that is not mere weariness — the 
losing of the soul to save itself, the taking of the yoke 
to find it easy, the drinking of the cup to its dregs to 
taste in these its sweetness. The Pharisee comes to the 
temple and offers up to God his righteousness ; the 
publican comes and offers up his sins — in him is re- 
pentance possible, a complete burial, a new birth. A 
man may strive outwardly against evil in every shape 
it outw T ardly takes, and yet so know the Father that he 
shall see that against which he strives as something 
essential, lying at the very root of life — that his open 
adversary, stripped of his disguises, is invisibly his 
friend from the beginning. And, again, a man may 
strive and trust alone to his strength, seeing good 
and evil only in their disguises, and for a season he 
may accumulate the good and fortify himself against 
the evil, securing comfort, safety, and outward integ- 



A SINGULAR REVELATION t 233 

rity ; yet shall the inevitable end come when the edifice 
shall be broken up and its treasure be found corrupt- 
ible, having no heavenly root or lodgment. Evil is 
known only as an enemy, and Death as the last enemy ; 
the adversary is never seen as the friend — there is no 
reconcilement. The whole need not a physician, but 
they that are sick. Blessed therefore are the meek in 
their expansive heritage ; blessed they that take to their 
hearts grief and poverty, hunger and thirst, and deso- 
lating defeat — for in all these they shall know Evil and 
Death for what they truly are in a divine Creation." 



V 

But the Lord did better than say all this : his life 
was this eternal truth incarnate. He " became Sin " 
and glorified Death. 

The imagination which created the legend of the 
Wandering Jew, upon whom, in the presence of a di- 
vine death, fell the doom of deathlessness, 
introduced into the scene with which it was S h " s ^ GI °, rl ~ 

fied Death. 

associated an element of striking contrast, 
suggesting the beatitude of mortality at the moment of 
its brightest illumination. Even as contrasted with 
Evil and Death not thus divinely illustrated, no more 
dreadful sentence could be pronounced upon any child 
of Earth than this : that for him there should never be 
pain or sickness, any hunger or thirst, any shadow to 
break the endless continuity of light, or any death. To 
make utterly impossible any benediction, to this exist- 
ence upon ground not accursed for its sake, it would 



234 A STUDY OF DEATH 

only be necessary to add to the sentence its awful con- 
comitant : Thou shalt never fall. Atropos, the un- 
turning one, could take no surer shape. The fixed 
horror of such a fate, so suggestive to us of utter 
weariness, would in reality lack even that relenting in 
its motionless apathy. But in the presence of the meek 
and lowly Jesus, bending beneath the weight of the 
cross, the blank, inflexible doom becomes unutterable 
and unthinkable, until the imagination of it vanishes 
into absurdity. 

For, behold, the Lord had fallen ! He had descend- 
ed from the bosom of the heavenly Father, and all his 
life upon the earth had been downward — away from 
the rich and powerful and wise and consciously correct 
to the poor and sick and sinful; and now this descent 
was to be completed, in the grave, even in hell — from 
the zenith to the nadir. Lucifer no farther fell, nor any 
son of Adam following him, than did this second Adam — 
Life-bearer, but drinking all of the mortal cup • Lighter 
of the Way, but taking all its darkness, even the mid- 
night of its lowest abyss. 

Thus was Death illustrated and made glorious, show- 
ing at its core, its sting having been taken, a strange 
and mystical beauty, not hitherto suspected, and not 
apparent in the shining perfections and accomplish- 
ments which men reach after all their lives. The 
Lord's blessings had always been upon the victims in 
the strife of earth, and in the most human of his para- 
bles he had shown how the returning prodigal had been 
given the best robe and the merry-making feast — signs 
of a loving father's rejoicing that aroused the envy of 
the unroving elder brother ; and in many ways he had 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 235 

taught the preciousness of lost things found, the glory 
of defeat turned into victory. Now he was about to 
make death itself enviable, so that men would run after 
it, fearful, indeed, lest they should escape martyrdom — 
so that they would listen with delight to the prayer for 
the passing soul, invoking the sure and speedy work 
upon it of purgatorial flames, expecting that way some 
secret excellence. 



VI 

But the Lord did not teach men to seek that which 
we commonly call death any more than he taught them 
to do evil. It is true, moreover, that he saw no living 
righteousness in what men call good — in 
conduct having reference to those particular ^g^ 11 
ends which men seek as children of this 
world. He revealed to men a larger heritage, an eter- 
nal kinship — they were the children of God. He re- 
ferred them to this fountain of love and light, from which 
every human heart had its pulsation, as the well lives 
from its spring. To be born again was to know one's 
self as a child of the Father — to know and do His 
will. As children of this world, men distinguish between 
good and evil, and so, under their limitation, they must, 
knowing benefit and harm from their relations to a sys- 
tem which has beginning and end ; but a new birth 
brings a new vision, wherein it is seen that God creates 
Evil as He creates Good, and that, as parts of this Crea- 
tion, they are complementary. 

Is not Christ the Word from the beginning, and so 
Nature before he was the Christ — including all that in 



236 A STUDY OF DEATH 

Nature we call evil as well as what we call good ? He 
was the first Adam as he is the last ; as the first espe- 
cially the son of God, and as the last especially the son 
of man. Thus twice humanly incarnate — the root and 
flower of the race — he is truly the Head of humanity, 
identified therewith from the beginning even unto the 
end. 

He never blamed men for their failures or praised 
them for their goodness, because he knew the limita- 
tion of every creature. From the heart of man, as from 
the source of all life, proceeded both good and evil, but 
in the new heart — that of the child born of the spirit, 
and seeking perfection not after an outward pattern but 
after the divine type; that is, to be "perfect as your 
Father in heaven is perfect " — the good included the evil. 
This is the reconcilement. To do the will of the Fa- 
ther, life must be willingly accepted on its own flaming 
terms, including that which will ultimately burn away 
all its outward vesture — even its habit of goodness. 

Is not this to bring man into harmony with Nature, 
in all whose cycles of motion, truly seen, repulsion ends 
in attraction, and is really one therewith from the point 
of departure ? 

The limitation itself is a bond of return. The place 
of exile is sure to be home, and existence in time has its 
ground in the life eternal. 

VII 

Why do we think of Christ as the Eternal Child ? 
And why did he present childhood as the type of the 
kingdom of heaven ? The child is unmoral, has not dis- 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 237 

cretion or prudence, and is not guided by the maxims 
of experience. These are negations perti- 
nent to a spiritual life in its latent powers ; ^ n 
but positively childhood represents the prin- 
ciple of such a life, because in it evil is hidden, as, indeed, 
goodness is also ; its germinant and expansive life is an 
ascent upon the wings of death. It is the season of taking 
rather than of giving, when capacity is deepened; when, 
at the same time that it is most energetically making its 
connections with the outside world, it is most withdrawn 
from that world, its communications with which are 
wholly for its own sake, availing of the descending min- 
istrations of other life for its own ascension. -When, at 
a later period, it knows self-sacrifice, then is the abun- 
dant death it has taken given up, yielded in expenditure, 
becoming patent. 

It is this uplifting power, making death and evil its 
ministrants — wondrous in its growth, in its vitalisation 
of its plastic organism, and in its supreme elasticity ; 
quick in its reaction, so that no possession clogs or 
encumbers ; the fittest symbol of creative might and 
authority — which the Lord had in view when he made 
childhood the type of his kingdom. In that view also 
was comprehended the unhesitating trust of the child 
and his fearless meekness and docility. All these 
qualities, in their heavenliest excellence, are combined 
in our conception of the Christ Child. 



238 A STUDY OF DEATH 



VIII 

But childhood is the type only ; that which it repre- 
sents is a fuller expression, with deeper meanings. The 
m . „, childhood is continued into manhood in the 

This Type 

as Developed Christ-life — into the expenditure, the sacri- 
fice, the descent, and yet in these maintain- 
ing the type. The latent potency is developed, but 
still keeps its plasticity, through a willing surrender 
of all those outward things which, in the ordinary line 
of human experience, make manhood desirable. The 
exercise of power in this line was suggested to the 
Lord in the temptation on the mount. To the child 
the possession of earthly things has little meaning ; he 
accepts all gifts as toys and falls asleep among them, 
showing instinctive contempt of those functions and 
uses familiar to mature experience ; but to the man the 
offer of external grandeur is the great temptation, and 
he may yield to it legitimately with the determination 
of a righteous exercise of power, truly magnifying his of- 
fice. Therefore when Christ puts aside the temptation it 
means more than the instinctive contempt of the child ; 
it is a wiling rejection. It is something, too, quite 
different from what is commonly called self-denial ; 
in the course of ordinary experience, the acceptance 
might be the true altruism. The Lord would have re- 
jected the office of High Priest of Jerusalem as readily 
as he did that of King of the Jews, which the people ex- 
pected the Messiah to take. It was officialism itself, 
whether sacred or secular, that he renounced. He re- 
frained from entering into those domestic relations 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 239 

properly enjoined as duties upon a citizen of this 
world. Because he was to be the real priest and king 
of all men, because he was to illustrate man's divine 
sonship, he repudiated for himself the insignia of a 
power and kinship which meant less than these. The 
renunciation was a sacrifice only in the meaning ex- 
pressed by the Psalmist : " Lo, I come to do thy will, 
O God." In the worldly view this withdrawal from 
benefits ardently sought by all men, and from duties 
held to be most binding and sacred, seems to be an 
anticipation of the divestiture wrought by death. In 
reality it is the introduction of a new death, bring- 
ing it next the new birth. It is a natural intimacy, re- 
peating the process which goes on in the germination 
of any seed, the outward husk of which is dissolved 
for the abounding of the inward life : in another sense 
it is mystical, since the new life is drawn from an in- 
visible fountain. It is the abundance rather than the 
divestiture that is the spiritual reality. As in child- 
hood, so in all germinant life : there is a hidden vio- 
lence, an immeasurable might, something imperative, 
which makes a kingdom. In the Christ this is marvel- 
lously shown in the multiplication of the loaves and 
fishes under his dividing hand, and in the healing 
virtue of his touch. His growth to manhood is de- 
scribed as a growth in grace, keeping the plastic and 
creative potency ; and that all evil as well as death is 
solvent at this fountain is aptly expressed in St. Paul's 
saying that "Where sin abounded, grace did much 
more abound." 



240 A STUDY OF DEATH 



IX 

We see, then, why loss is the first word of the king- 
dom of heaven, and why the baptism of the Lord is 
with fire. It is because flame destroys that it is 
constructive ; and this thought brings us back to 
the Hebrew, and enables us to better comprehend his 
outward brokenness and divestiture ; for the flame 
which in the Christ was the illumination of the spir- 
itual truth of an eternal life ; which in its fusion 
absorbed and consumed the external fabric of exist- 
«...,„, ence — the habit which men called good 

Child Type ° 

Developed in as well as that which they called evil — and 
which became the pentecostal flame of a 
new human fellowship, was the consummation of that 
which burned in the heart of every faithful Hebrew 
from Abraham to Simeon — a torment without, but an 
inward peace. 

In many ways the Hebrew race, in the fulfilment of 
its peculiar destiny, foreshadowed the spiritual principle 
illustrated in the singular life of Jesus. As he was the 
Desire of all nations, and therefore could not mar his 
brightness as the Sun of a spiritual system embracing 
all humanity through any merely worldly aspiration, so 
the promise made to Abraham was one including all 
nations, and this large expectation would have failed 
of its true expression in earthly successes and triumphs, 
in the attainment of those things " which the Gentiles 
seek." 

We think, too, of the ancient Hebrew as a child, and 
in a peculiar sense the child of God. " The Hebrew 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 241 

children " is a characteristic phrase, as applicable to a 
people always in a comparatively plastic state, and 
whose language never departed from its native and 
radical simplicity. 

Considering what the spiritual life of the Hebrew 
means for us, we are surprised that a vine which has 
spread over the earth occupied so small a garden in its 
original growth, quite escaping the notice of classic his- 
tory. In no field of human achievement has the ancient 
Hebrew left any signal monument of worldly grandeur. 
We can account for his political insignificance by situa- 
tion and circumstance, but for his lack of any positive 
accomplishment in science, art, or philosophy we can 
find no explanation save in his peculiar genius and des- 
tiny; and of these the only ancient sign left us is his 
sacred literature. That he was not destitute of imagina- 
tion is shown in this literature, which is as singular in 
its distinction from all others as was his whole history 
from that of all other peoples. Here the imagination 
takes its loftiest flight in song and prophecy, and its 
simplest strain in the quaint records of patriarchal life, 
in the story of Joseph and of Ruth, and in the most 
fully incarnate idyl of passionate love ever put in words 
— the Song of Solomon ; and there is no appearance of 
incongruity in bringing together all these into that sacred 
collection known to us as the Holy Bible. Never in 
human expression has there been so intimate associa- 
tion of the sensibility of the flesh with the highest spir- 
itual exaltation ; and we note the absence of that which 
lies between the spirit and the sensibility — that play of 
mental activity which is so especially the charm of al- 
most all classic and of all modern literature. In this 
16 



-4- A STUDY OF DEATH 



connection; it is significant that while the Hebrew gave 
a natural expression to his emotions in the song and 
the dance, and delighted in personal adornments, in per- 
fumes and savory foods and wines, bringing these also 
into close association with religious worship, he had no 
representative arts, such as painting, sculpture, or the 
drama. While his spiritual expression was thus so di- 
rectly incarnate, he did not seek that perfection of bodily 
exercise which, among the Greeks, was the result of 
elaborate athletic training. 

It may be said that this lack of completeness is ex- 
plained, as in the case of any barbaric race, by the fact 
that the Hebrew was so backward and unprogressive — 
so slow to put away his childhood. But this is his very 
singularity. Why was he thus withheld in the plastic 
state of childhood? It is not true of the Hebrew race 
that it was barbaric, in the proper sense of the term. 
Other Semitic peoples from the same old Arabian desert. 
like the Phoenician and the Assyrian, were builders of 
cities, and advanced rapidly from the nomadic state into 
very complex forms of civilisation, Others still re- 
mained in the desert, where they may be found to-day, 
degenerate, indeed, but otherwise living in the same 
manner as did their ancestral tribes four thousand years 
ago. During the long period of the patriarchate, which 
was a prolonged childhood, the spiritual capacity of the 
Hebrew was deepened; but the quality and might of 
this expansion are indicated and measured by the re- 
sultant movement, culminating in the appearance of 
the Messiah and the resurrection and revitalisation of a 
dead world : and they are not to be accounted for by 
anv outward condition. 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 243 

The prolonged childhood was an essential prelude 
to a so singular manifestation : it was a childhood 
maintained after the disappearance of the patriarchate, 
and through the entire cycle of the Hebrew destiny. 
One of its characteristic traits is shown in the wonder- 
ful power of assimilation. It has been asserted by pro- 
found scholars that the Hebrew derived his Sabbath 
from the Babylonian, the institution of the Judges from 
the Phoenicians, and the rite of circumcision from the 
Egyptians, along with the ark, the Shekinah, and the 
Neshulon, or brazen serpent, which held its place in the 
Holy of Holies until it was thrust out by Ezekiel. Even 
his idea of angels and of a future life is said to have 
taken definite shape through contact with the Persians 
after the great captivity. Assuming that all this is true, it 
would only show the marvellous selective genius of the 
Hebrew. Does the child prepare for himself his heri- 
tage ? He accepts that which he has not made, but 
he makes it his own, and from his own heart gives it a 
meaning. The purpose involved in the spiritual des- 
tiny of the Hebrew " is purposed upon the whole earth ;" 
therefore to this child the earth is a heritage, and the 
whole world brings its offerings. What, then, if the 
skilled men of Tyre built Solomon's temple ? In 
Isaiah's forecast of glorified Zion the stranger's will- 
ing tribute to that glory is magnified. " The Gentiles 
shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of 
thy rising. . . . The abundance of the sea shall be 
converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall 
come unto thee. . . . And the sons of strangers shall 
build up thy walls." This Hebrew childhood stands 
for that of humanity — its issue is the Son of Man. 



244 A STUDY OF DEATH 

This people was by its fervid enthusiasm lifted to a 
plane of expression so lofty that its pride was not in 
the initiation of institutions any more than in their per- 
fection ; only that inward grace was regarded which 
gave them a living soul. Its possession of outward 
things was an adoption in the name of the Holy One. 
The zeal was also a jealousy. Whatever hands raised 
the temple, the Jews would have destroyed the edifice 
rather than admit within its sacred enclosure the statue 
of a Roman emperor. The attempt of Antiochus Epiph- 
anes to merge Hebraism into Hellenism aroused the 
heroic and successful revolt of the Maccabees. In the 
earl} 7 period, when the patriarchs in alien territory rec- 
ognized the power therein of alien gods, the jealousy 
of a tribal religion was consistent with the tolerance of 
other religions equally provincial, and was very differ- 
ent from that which in later times guarded a compre- 
hensive faith in a Jehovah who is the God of all the 
earth — this guardianship implying a responsibility as 
broad as the faith. In this higher view, Israel was a 
peculiar people, not as one enjoying exclusive benefits, 
but rather as undergoing special sufferings for the 
whole human race — a view not easily maintained save 
by the very elect, but cherished by the prophets in 
every age. 

The divestiture of the Hebrew was as conspicuous 
in his religious as in his secular life. He was forbid- 
den to make an image or likeness of anything in the 
heavens or in the earth or in the waters under the earth. 
Every other prohibition of the Decalogue was deemed 
as obligatory in the Egyptian system of ethics as in the 
Mosaic law, but this was distinctively Hebraic. In 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 245 

their beginnings the arts of painting and sculpture 
have always been associated with the expression of re- 
ligious feeling, but they were denied any nurture by the 
Hebrew faith. The prohibition is not merely the ex- 
clusion of polytheism and idolatry, but of all represent- 
ative art. A living movement must in no way be ar- 
rested in a dead thing. The swiftness of the primitive 
paschal feast, the erect attitude of the participants sug- 
gesting expedition, showed the indispositon to loiter in 
any sacred way. The prophets always regarded with 
aversion the elaborate ritual of the temple worship at 
Jerusalem — a living movement arrested in fixed forms. 

Symbolism was not excluded by the prohibition of 
the simulacrum; rather it was heightened, keeping more 
closely to an inward meaning. The one essential di- 
vine symbol was man himself, God's express image in 
the world of living things. The Hebrew progression 
in spiritual lines was toward the God-man ; it was the 
culture of an Emmanuel. 

The human nature of the Hebrew was the same as 
that of every other race, having the same aspirations, 
mental, moral, and religious, the same eager desires 
for earthly possession and power — for all, indeed, 
which it seems to have been denied \ and these natural 
tendencies common to all mankind were not only amply 
illustrated at every period of this people's history, but 
intensified by unsatisfied hunger. The great majority 
fell away centuries before the appearance of the Mes- 
siah, drawn almost irresistibly by the fascinations of 
the pagan world — its nature worship, its indulgence of 
fond imaginations, its splendours and dramatic pomp ; 
and of those who were held to the lofty strain, how 



246 A STUDY OF DEATH 

many were hedged in by the compelling Angel of the 
Lord or subdued by suffering and the pressure of cir- 
cumstance; how many were alarmed by the threaten- 
ings or persuaded by the pleadings of the prophets ! 
But to the faithful few who waited for the glory to be 
revealed — to the seers and the prophets and the guile- 
less country shepherds — there was another charm, more 
potent than any which could appeal to the sense or the 
intellect — the charm of that expectation which lifts the 
heart of the mother waiting her time, radiant in her 
travail. Here was that Israel which should " see of 
the travail of his soul and be satisfied." Here burned 
that sacred flame which preyed upon and devoured the 
embodiment. 



To the early Aryan also God was a fire — a fire which 
built and beautified the world ; which was the fervour of 
the animal and the glory of the flower, and which had 
its intimate human symbol in the flame upon 
between He- the hearth-stone, the centre of familiar affec- 
v h Tn T\ ^ on anc * l° vm & kinship. But to the Hebrew, 
his God was a consuming fire, which so re- 
builded life in a new heaven and a new earth. Where 
the pagan saw creation with its ceaseless round of 
birth and death, the Hebrew with prophetic vision saw 
recreation — a new death and a new birth. " Art thou 
a master in Israel," said the Lord to Nicodemus, " and 
knowest not these things?" — the things pertaining to 
the mystery of regeneration. The charm of such a 
faith is that of a desire never exhausted in outward 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 247 

realisation, and so conserving its native might. In 
paganism the religious instinct was given complete 
scope. Paul complained of the Greeks that they were 
too religious, and he welcomed the signs of a worship 
of the unknown God, of a divinity not circumscribed 
by the limits of imaginative definition and of ritualistic 
familiarity. The pagan system of worship was a net- 
work of ritualism and a hotbed of sacerdotalism. In its 
beginnings, true to Nature, the lines of its development 
were brought to completion within the closed circle of 
a visible environment, so that the secret of Nature 
itself was hidden. The Hebrew faith looked forward 
to the divine-human Incarnation ; the pagan anticipated 
this incarnation, exhausting its imagination of it in 
types which fell short of and precluded the transcend- 
ent intuition. 



XI 

The conservation of the spiritual principle through 
the incompleteness of outward form and structure was 
promoted by the Hebrew prophets. Whenever the 
race was borne aloft in the common aspira- m „ . 

r Mission of 

tion of all civilised peoples for military glory, the 
for the luxury and grandeur of cities, for the r p 
splendours of a royal court and a temple ritual, it was 
continually thrust back to earth, prostrate as one pos- 
sessed by demons, and by prophetic exorcism was com- 
pelled to confess its peculiar destiny. These prophets 
were thorns in the flesh of kings and of priests • they 
were the great disturbers, the preachers of humiliation ; 
but they were the people's hope, and though in their 



248 A STUDY OF DEATH 

sadly triumphal journeys they rode upon asses, they 
were hailed by popular acclamations and recognized 
as pre-eminently men of God. Through their influ- 
ence social ambitions as well as national aspirations 
were held in check. The Prophet was ubiquitous and 
irrepressible, and from the time of Samuel there was 
a school, a continuous succession, of these witnesses 
to a Lord surely to come on earth. They remoulded 
sacred traditions, and the critical scholar detects traces 
of their illuminating and transforming influence in the 
pages of holy writ, giving a deeper meaning to the 
record of creation, the legend of Eden, and the summa- 
tion of the Law. 



XII 

To bring in the Eternal Child, and to show that in 
him man is, even within the limitations of time, the 
heir of an eternal life, was the Messianic destiny of the 

H , Hebrew. This plant in the garden of the 

Thought of Lord was diligently tended by the divine 

husbandman, relentlessly pruned, cut back to 

the quick, and thus was ever kept green and tender, as 

on the very brink of an exhaustless fountain. 

Often the vine strayed beyond the garden wall and 
lost its succulence ; perversions there were to which 
even the prophets were reluctantly indulgent, as in the 
popular clamour for a king; the law, so gentle in its 
spirit and associated with the meekest of men in its 
beginnings, came to tolerate a kind of rigid justice — 
the requirement of an eye for an eye, a life for a life ; 
and, according to Ezekiel, the perversion was some- 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 249 

times of divine origin, Jehovah himself giving his peo- 
ple " statutes that were not good and judgments where- 
in they should not live," and " polluted them in their 
own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire 
all their first-born, that He might make them desolate . . . 
to the end that they might know that He was the Lord." 
This declaration, so startling to a modern ear, was not 
intended to convey the impression that God tempted 
men to do evil, but was a forcible expression of a con- 
viction, characteristic of Hebrew faith, that the respon- 
sibility for evil as for good was in the largest sense 
divine. " ' I create good and I create evil,' saith the 
Lord." It was not permitted the Hebrew to think of 
his sins as his own. His derelictions were monstrous, 
and he needed the prophetic consolation that the Fa- 
ther shared the wanderings of His children, encompass- 
ing them in infinite wisdom and compassion, so that in 
the end they might see that the way of even the widest 
wanderer was the way home. 

Thus the flexibility and plasticity of the Hebrew 
childhood was maintained even in his idea of the law. 
Through the Pentateuch runs the warm current of 
divine tenderness, in its merciful intention including 
also with the children the stranger within their gates. 
It is a protest against inhumanity of every sort. In 
no sacred scripture is there shown such a sense of 
childlike dependence upon the Giver of all good (in- 
cluding all evil), or such faith in the unfailing mercy 
and free forgiveness of God as in the Psalms and in 
the Prophets. 

The Hebrew thought of God was the child's thought 
— the child's intimate thought, and had in it a naive 



250 A STUDY OF DEATH 

feeling not discoverable in the early pagan thought 
The latter was more completely crystallised in its ex- 
pression, more definitely projected in the form of 
myths that sought correlation and consistency, while 
the Hebrew thought became neither mythology nor 
theology, being withheld in that flowing realm where 
all life is a constant miracle — a field of easy transfor- 
mations, of shadowy appearances that come and go as 
in a dream, of living truths completed in their own 
contradiction. 

The instability of his environment impressed the 
Hebrew. Existence seemed to him like the fluidity of 
water, now lifted up in unsubstantial vapour and again 
taking visible shape, falling to the earth and dispersed 
over its surface — a blessing even in its descent and 
dispersion. Formal ethics was as impossible to him 
as was fixed dogma. It never occurred to him to de- 
termine the consistent structure of human character 
any more than it would to make a chart of the divine 
nature and attributes, limiting his God by definition. 
His hope was not a logical expectation ; and therefore 
we do not find in the Prophets any formal determina- 
tion of Messiahship, which nevertheless we, looking 
back, can see dominant in living imagination and 
pregnant phrase. Some issue, it was felt, there must 
be of deliverance ; but when we read in Isaiah of " a 
sword bathed in heaven " we know better than he what 
depth of meaning was in his words. There is no 
generalisation in the expression of the great hope ; the 
imagination always takes a concrete shape, but capable 
of expansion into what we see is the spiritual principle 
of a new kingdom, as when the prophet foresees some 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 251 

reconciliation to come of good and evil : " The wolf 
also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie 
down with the kid ; and the calf and the young lion 
and the fading together ; and a little child shall lead 
them." 

For the Hebrew there was no logical plan of any 
life. He saw no anomaly in the suffering of the inno- 
cent for the guilty — the procession of life was in no 
other way ; it was a course of vicarious passion from 
generation to generation. In the time immediately 
preceding the coming of Christ, the belief gained 
ground and became a conviction that the sufferings of 
an innocent man were of living value to the face, hav- 
ing not merit as satisfying divine justice, but a com- 
municable virtue in the action and reaction of a life 
wherein formal justice had no place. Reaction, often 
taking the extreme form of contradiction, was so famil- 
iar to his experience that the Hebrew conceived it as 
prominent in divine as in human operation. The wheel 
was always turning, so that the low were lifted up and 
the exalted were cast down. His beatitudes were, like 
those of our Lord, apparent paradoxes. Repentance, 
associated in his mind with abject misery, as in the 
mind of the Prodigal Son, was the great reaction in the 
life of a man, bringing him home ; and he would as 
soon have had a god of wood or stone as one who did 
not himself repent, so that the Father's mood could 
respond to that of His returning child. To him God 
was not the Immutable. The visible universe was 
but His vesture, to be folded up like a garment in His 
own good time — forever, indeed, being folded and un- 
folded. What, then, was there which man could wrap 



252 A STUDY OF DEATH 

about himself, whether of goodness or badness, that 
must not fall away, leaving him naked in the day of the 
Lord ? The outwardly built-up character, of whatever 
sort, must be consumed in His fire. The flame which 
destroys is the flame of Love ; though seeming to 
angrily swell and roar, devouring every dry thing, 
yet the beginning thereof is the tender yearning, and 
the issue the tender renewal of the eternal kinship. 
The wheel of life, showing red and black beneath, 
shows green in the softness of warmth and light above; 
and when the revolving spheres in heaven themselves 
grow old, the fire that consumes them destroys utterly, 
that there may be completeness of annihilation and so 
entire transformation — a new wheeling and sphering of 
morning stars. 

The flame of life is tropical, forever turning and final- 
ly rending. But the obverse of nothingness is Crea- 
tion. Therefore the Hebrew, in the loftiest strain of 
his spiritual imagination, loved to dwell upon the signs 
of destruction. To him life presented the constant al- 
ternation of wrath and love, of storm and peace, of dark 
oblivion and softly rising dawns of remembrance. In 
the extremity of affliction he rent his clothes ; then he 
anointed his head and washed his face. This man of 
sorrows was anointed with the oil of gladness above 
his fellows. 

XIII 

The anthropomorphism of the Hebrew was implied 
in a faith which so closely united the divine with the 
human. The earliest conception of this union was that 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 253 

of a flesh and blood kinship, and sacrifice in its origi- 
nal form was a feast, celebrating and renew- 

. . . Hebrew 

ing this intimate covenant. The Hebrew Symbolism 
continuation of this old Bedouin kinship, t ^^^ n ' 
while it was really a transformation, yet main- 
tained the intimacy of the divine relationship. Blood 
was still its living current, and, wherever shed, returned 
to its source. Next to the current of life, the increase 
thereof, whose symbol was fatness, was held especially 
sacred, and in sacrificial rites the fat which w T as burned 
went up as a sweet savour of grateful return for the 
abounding of life, as the blood shed was a response for 
life itself. The Hebrews were forbidden to eat the 
blood or the fat of an animal, since these are the 
Lord's. Perhaps it was from this association that 
Swedenborg regarded fat as the celestial principle. 
With the Hebrews it was associated with the feeling of 
mercy and compassion, and was the sign of bounty ; 
but its essential mystical significance relates to abun- 
dance not as plenty, but as increment — the power of in- 
crease which is so pre-eminently the miracle of life in 
its wondrous fertility and growth. In the spiritual as 
in the physical world the first of all commandments is 
" Be fruitful and multiply." Herein also is the. princi- 
ple of authority (auctoritas from angeo, to increase), the 
gracious marrow of our hard bones. The perversion of 
the principle is avarice, oppression, hardness of heart, 
scripturally indicated in the phrase, as applied to a 
man thus degenerate, designating him as "enclosed in 
his own fat." In the Oriental conception the beauty 
of woman was the favour of embonpoint ; and according 
to the most recent deliverance of embryological science 



254 A STUDY OF DEATH 

the better nourished ovum becomes the female. In 
maternity the two sacred Hebrew symbols are united. 
The blood of the mother is turned into milk, and from 
the roundness of her breasts flows into the roundness 
of cheek and limbs that give to infancy its grace and 
favour. 

Attention has already been drawn to the fact that 
Hebrew symbolism was confined to a living, growing 
organism, as distinguished from aesthetic re-presentation 
in alia materia — in stone or on the canvas. We see 
in this symbolism, as above indicated, an especial con- 
finement to a human body, as the real spiritual temple 
— "the temple of God" in St. Paul's interpretation. It 
is the carnal which becomes the Incarnate : cast down 
to hell and lifted up to heaven. The symbolism reached 
its most profound meaning in the words of Christ: 
" Except ye eat the flesh of the son of man and drink 
his blood, ye have no life in you." And he who said 
this, in the same breath repudiated the flesh as profit- 
ing nothing : " The words that I speak unto you — they 
are the spirit and they are life." While this is a con- 
tradiction of the one declaration to the other, both to- 
gether are really an expression of the identity of em- 
bodiment with spirit, " He who hath seen me hath seen 
the Father." The vine which has been so long tended 
and pruned has come to its fruitage ; its grapes have 
been trodden in the wine-press, and here is expressed its 
free spirit — that which was its life from the beginning. 

The Hebrew idea of spirit implied personality ; it 
was not an abstraction. Therefore, the adjective " spir- 
itual " was not in use. It occurs but once in the Old 
Testament (Hosea ix. 7), where it has not the modern 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 255 

sense, and never in the Gospels, though so frequent in 
St. Paul's Epistles. The phrase "spiritual life," so fa- 
miliar to modern thought, is not to be found in the 
Bible. The spirit must have embodiment, and could 
not otherwise be conceived. Thus the Spirit of God de- 
scended upon Christ when he was baptised, taking the 
body of a dove. To the polytheistic Aryan this Spirit 
would have taken diverse shapes in numberless divini- 
ties — dryads and naiads and nymphs ; but to the He- 
brew it was the One. Pagan divinities were given the 
human shape ; in the Hebrew faith man was fashioned 
in the image of God, and though the visage of humanity 
was marred, yet had the Divine Spirit seized upon the 
seed of Abraham for the renewal of His image. The 
divine kinship was to be realised in the flesh, and in a 
sense far deeper and more intimate than that in which 
the Jews "had Abraham for their father." This in- 
timacy is sometimes expressed in the scriptural phrase, 
designating a man in a state of peculiar exaltation as 
"in the Spirit." They were sons of God to whom the 
Word came, and, in an especial sense, Christ, who was 
the Word become flesh. 

In Christ the Spirit, which had been veiled and hid- 
den, was revealed as free — in a mystery openly wrought 
in his very body. " I have power to lay down my life, 
and I have power to take it again." Is not this the 
full expression of a freedom which may well be called 
that " of the sons of God " — the breaking of a circle 
hitherto closed as to human vision it seemed, or, rather, 
the completion of the circle by showing, in the Resur- 
rection, the other half of it, hitherto shadowed by the 
apparent conclusion of Death ? 



256 A STUDY OF DEATH 



XIV 

We must be on our guard against the conception of 
what we have called the Hebrew destiny, as being, be- 
cause it was so singular, something contrary to the 
course of Nature, when that course is truly seen. The 
parabola described by a comet seems singu- 
larity not lar to the denizens of planets moving in ellip- 
upema ura . ^.^ orD it s? but we do not therefore exclude 
this phenomenon from our science of astronomy. What 
we call supernatural, applying the term to any singular 
manifestation of life, is something in nature itself which 
is inexplicable through any co-ordination we have been 
able to make. Even the mystical view, which tran- 
scends the visible in its intuition of creative life, only 
postulates the hidden side of nature — the fountain of 
its issue ; as if, recognising the visible as development 
in form and structure, and in a harmony imperfectly 
comprehended by us, we saw also, with the poet, that 
" All foundations are laid in heaven." While we are 
naturally apt to think of vital systems as planned, all 
forms having been divinely premeditated and all rela- 
tions preconceived with reference to adaptation, still 
we know that the creative must be the formative and 
involve the adaptation, and that the admission of a 
single arbitrary element, such as we associate with 
human design and the adaptation of means to ends, 
would introduce into the universe the operation of a 
limited wisdom — not of wisdom spontaneously coming 
under a limit, but finite at its source, and liable to the 
fallibility and uncertainty attending all human experi- 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 257 

mentation. Moreover, we know that even in human 
life — in all that determines its real issues, as distin- 
guished from ends consciously in view — there is no 
such arbitrament, but rather a vital destination from a 
purpose that cannot fail, inerrantly wise. 

The Hebrew was no more a man of destiny than was 
the Assyrian, the Chinese, or the Indo-European. In 
the physiology of humanity, each of these races had its 
special allotment of function by a vital destination like 
that which determines the drift of constellations, the 
configuration of continents and the currents of the air 
and the sea. Yet the mission of the Hebrew was as 
peculiar and distinct as are the course and temperature 
of the Gulf Stream in the midst of the waters. It can- 
not, in our thought of it, be separated from the incar- 
nate Lord, to whom was given " power over all flesh," 
so that the mystery of the Incarnation, though so inti- 
mately associated with the seed of Abraham, is yet 
catholic and genetically dominant as associated with 
the destiny of the whole human race. 



XV 

The repudiation of Christ by the Hebrews is as re- 
markable as his acceptance by the Gentiles. " He 
came to his own, and his own received him not." This 
was but the continuation of the hostility 
shown to the Prophets, of the recalcitrance j ew andGen- 
of this obstinate and stiff-necked people tU e toward 

r r Christ. 

against its peculiar destiny from the begin- 
ning. There had been the deepening of a vast hun- 



258 A STUDY OF DEATH 

ger — in the few, indeed, for the bread from heaven, 
but in the many, especially at Jerusalem, for earthly 
rehabilitation. To these latter the Son of David, the 
long-expected redeemer of his people, seemed only to 
aggravate their desolation. He despised the glory 
upon which their hearts were set, bringing their pride 
to the dust even as had the Prophets before him. He 
repudiated them, even their boasted kinship with Abra- 
ham and their consciousness of an especial divine elec- 
tion ; his sermons and parables exalted other peoples 
at the Jews' expense ; he predicted the destruction of 
their temple. He put aside his own mother and breth- 
ren in favour of a more blessed kinship. He chose for 
his companions those whom the pious Pharisees and 
Levites deemed outcasts. He crucified them, and they 
crucified him. He told them that publicans and har- 
lots entered the kingdom before them ; they preferred 
Barabbas, the robber, to him, and condemned him to 
die between two thieves. He seemed to Judas false 
to a cherished hope, and Judas betrayed him. Even 
his friends, those who believed in him, were com- 
pelled to drink the cup of bitter humiliation at his 
defeat and death, and to listen to the jeers of them 
that said in scorn : Others he saved, himself he could 
not save. In this dark hour his disciples were stricken 
with shame and fear, and one of them denied him. 
Failure was turned into triumph by the Lord's resur- 
rection : but the full meaning of this glorious morning 
was not appreciated by the believers who remained at 
Jerusalem, clinging to the old ritual and still rejecting 
the uncircumcised, while the sect of Ebionites wholly 
misconceived the new life, ignoring its positive princi- 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 259 

pie, which was to revitalise and transform the world, 
and continued beyond the Jordan the practice of a 
sterile asceticism, maintaining that divestiture which 
in itself was merely a negative and accidental aspect 
of the Christ-life. 

The hunger of the Gentile for the Christ was due to 
inanition, to the vanity of earthly accomplishment, and 
was a downright malady; like the fever of the prod- 
igal, who, having been sated with revels, had been 
brought to starvation, while the Hebrew, like the elder 
brother in the parable, had been kept, albeit by a kind 
of compulsion, in the Father's house. The Gentile 
had come into a barrenness which, left to itself, must 
become utter sterility, as of a rod that could not blos- 
som. He had not been tormented by the consuming 
flame of a sacred fire or by a school of prophets for- 
ever cutting his life back to its root. His oracles were 
dumb ; his temples, adorned with the statues of divini- 
ties, w T ere haunted by the ghosts of dead gods and not 
filled by a living presence ; his ritual was more easily 
repudiated than that of Jerusalem could be by Hebrews 
as devout as the apostle James. Therefore he not only 
with greater avidity accepted the new faith, but was 
more alive to its newness, and readier to give it a prac- 
tical embodiment, making our Christendom. 

Very likely, if w r e had the means of ascertaining the 
historical truth of the matter, we should find that 
among the Jews those who most eagerly embraced 
Christianity were the Pharisees, not only because the 
idea of the resurrection associated with the early and 
beautiful faith of this sect had been in so remarkable 
a way revived, but because their religious observances 



260 A STUDY OF DEATH 

— like those of the pagans — had become so formal in 
minute and trivial details as to the more readily fall 
into oblivion and disuse. Certainly, after the resurrec- 
tion of Christ, we have no record of their opposition 
to the new faith, and Paul, who boasted himself " a 
Pharisee of the Pharisees," was the great apostle to 
the Gentiles. 

The Gentiles, who stood outside of that earthly kin- 
ship which related the Hebrews to Christ, and who had 
directly no part in his birth, have yet given him his 
embodiment in the world, overshadowed by the Holy 
Spirit for a new conception of the Emmanuel. There- 
fore said Isaiah : 

" Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear ; break 
forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not 
travail with child : for more are the children of the 
desolate than the children of the married wife, saith 
the Lord." 

Another Sarah laughed in her tent. Another virgin 
was to magnify the Lord. 



XVI 

The real meaning of a movement is disclosed in the 

issue. The personality of Jesus was the issue of the 

Hebrew destiny. He was the Child of that race, and 

as it is that which is to come that is domi- 

TheUmver- nan f \{ ls singularity determined the singular 

sal Hope. ' . & 

character of his people from the beginning, 
who thus became the progressive incarnation of him. 
In him was concluded this embodiment through a flesh- 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 261 

and-blood kinship. Through that more intimate kin- 
ship with the Father, which it was especially his mis- 
sion to reveal and make real for all men, Christian hu- 
manity is a new incarnation of him, as in a spiritual 
body. Thus the Lord is ever to come, reappearing in 
every renascence of human society. The Divine name 
Jehovah, or JaveJi, as Dr. John De Witt has shown 
in his version of the Psalms, means not merely I am, 
hut I am to come; so that in the largest sense all mani- 
festation is his appearance. The history of humanity 
is a divine history. 

What we commonly call history is a record of struct- 
ural development ending in decay. In a spiritual in- 
terpretation of human history we see death only as 
birth, regarding not merely what falls but also and 
chiefly resurrections — a line of successive manifesta- 
tions ever newly revealing the Father; and in such a 
view we trace from the earliest record to the present 
time a more or less distinct line of progressive revela- 
tion. It is a prophetic line, as remote as possible from 
any sacerdotal association, yet ecclesiastical in the orig- 
inal meaning of the term (from ecdesia, a calling out) 
since the call of Abraham out from his country and his 
people into a new promise and possession. It begins 
at every epoch, like all new life, in dissociation and re- 
pulsion, disclosing in its development the bond of at- 
traction and association. 

This line is human before it is Hebrew. To us Abra- 
ham appears as the first of the prophets, but in some 
more primitive faith what line may have preceded him 
of men who heard the divine voice calling them out 
from among peoples degenerate in custom to begin in 



262 A STUDY OF DEATH 

another land a new order, conserving a seed of promise 
for mankind ? Who knows what nursery this earlier 
church may have had, perhaps in old Accadia, from 
which comes to us a faint breathing of the eternal 
hope ? The figure of Melchisedec stands boldly out 
against that ancient sunrise. And, before all, was not 
the promise made to Abraham first made to Eve, so 
that divinity was bound up with our very mortality, 
seizing upon " the seed of the woman " in the begin- 
ning of generations ? In the Gospel of John all the 
generations of time bear the impress of this hope, and 
we behold the Logos as the light of the world, the 
glory of an Evangel coeternal with God. 

In the identification, from Eternity, of man with the 
Lord is held, behind all veils, the living meaning of the 
Universe. 

XVII 

But it is with Abraham that modern history begins — 

our history, the warp and woof of whose variegated 

web may with more or less certainty be traced to its 

original patterns. This venerable patriarch ; 

oT h tL s ivpe g the friend of God 5 the father of man y P eo ~ 

pies besides the Hebrew; the peace-loving 
brother ; owner of flocks and herds and gold and silver ; 
the victorious warrior honoured of Melchisedec ; the ear- 
liest of Semitic sojourners in Egypt ; the first merchant 
on record dealing with money; the zealous intercessor 
with God for the doomed cities of Sodom and Gomor- 
rah ; and the father of the faithful, whose Paradise was 
his bosom, represented to his descendants the golden 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 263 

age. David and Solomon were glorious memories to 
the Hebrews ; but the thought of Abraham carried them 
back beyond their trials and distresses to a period of 
calm content associated with spiritual promise, but not 
with the fiery furnace through which they passed to its 
fulfilment. 

The long patriarchate was, as has already been indi- 
cated, a happy preparation for the peculiar life of the 
children of Israel. Its background stretched far back 
into the Bedouin past. The deep impulse which sent 
Abraham forth from Chaldea, instead of disturbing the 
patriarchal habit of tent and shepherd life, gave it dis- 
tinct form and character. Thus was nourished the 
genius of the race, and doubtless if we could penetrate 
the veil which hides from us all but the superficial 
aspects of life in those early days, we would be able 
to note even there the singularity aftenvard so con- 
spicuous, and, in the dreams of the shepherds as they 
watched their flocks by night, discern some tokens of 
a mood not elsewhere deepening and expanding, but 
there alone increasing, inbreathing, and infolding God, 
and making for Him spacious reception, and so en- 
larging the capacity for the spiritual promise — for its 
heavenly hope and its earthly desolation. It was a 
mood prescient of the Psalmist who should sing, " The 
Lord is my shepherd ;" especially was it prescient of 
the words of Isaiah : " Enlarge the place of thy tent, 
and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habita- 
tions ; spare not : lengthen thy cords, and strengthen 
thy stakes." 

Time was given for this enlargement, for the expan- 
sive culture of the shepherd's dream, full of the night 



264 A STUDY OF DEATH 

and the stars and God ; but it was of eternity rather 
than of time, so that the mood of it was a strong hold- 
ing of things inwardly precious and incorruptible, and 
a strong withholding from artificial constructions — from 
the things which make cities and kingdoms and the 
institutions of civilisation. The religious instinct com- 
mon to all peoples was in these tribes lifted out of its 
usual plane of development. 

From the first, then, the singular type was set, which, 
though it had so little outward stability, was, as it al- 
ways has been and is to-day, the most insistent and 
abiding racial type on earth. Even in the primitive 
patriarchal era there was something more than a noble 
quality of animal life, than the strong instincts of a 
vital manhood, fierce in its virility, yet with a natu- 
ral restraint; all this was exalted and intensified by 
that divine alliance which was already recognised as 
a reality, the ground of the later covenant, embrac- 
ing a world. Some special readiness to receive was 
the basis of a special revelation, though the reception 
was in trembling fear and with many signs of repul- 
sion. They were themselves gods unto whom the 
word of the Lord came, else it could not have come ; 
some consubstantial flame in man was witness to the 
flame of the spirit. That which was in the heart of the 
child Samuel — that waiting desire which made him 
listen in the still night for the divine Voice — that which 
in the inmost heart of man makes it the bride of God, 
was a determining element in the vital destination of 
the Hebrew. 

The nomadic shepherd life had always some unrest. 
The tent was forever being shifted, if only for new past- 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 265 

urage \ but there was in this wandering impulse, as 
affecting the early Hebrew, a spiritual disturbance un- 
settling content, the expedition of a mystical pilgrim- 
age. 

As in all childhood there is a heavenly holding and 
withholding, which in some one child becomes a special 
nurture with more ample storage of buoyant hope, a- 
deeper inbreathing of the air of dawn, so, while we dis- 
cern in all race-beginnings a spiritual impulse, a fresh 
and living flame like that which breathed through the 
Vedic Hymns, yet in the Hebrew origin we behold 
such seizure upon God that the divine seems to be in- 
sphered in the human, increasing and abounding there 
through the long morning ; and, though that which 
holds it so largely is finally broken, it is broken as is 
some precious argosy whose treasure is bestowed upon 
all lands — is indeed the broken matrix which has held 
Emmanuel. 

In the prolonged patriarchate was set the type of 
this peculiar people — the note to which it was held ac- 
cordant, though the discords were many and violent. 
Here were engendered Psalm and Prophecy and the 
Messianic hope. This period lasted long enough to 
become an exemplar. The tent, so easily folded and 
removed, was the foretype of that earthly instability 
which characterised the fortunes of this people — an 
ideal standard of divestiture to which the prophet was 
always calling back, reducing life to its simplest prin- 
ciple. The familiar watchword, " To your tents, O 
Israel I" remains to the last the refrain of Hebrew his- 
tory. 

How different this Hebrew patriarchate from that 



266 A STUDY OF DEATH 

of the Chinese, which we see to-day in the crystalline 
calm where it has been held in arrest for centuries ! 
How different from the obese degeneration of the an- 
cestral type among the Bedouins of the desert ! And as 
to its outcome, we see clearly how distinct it is by com- 
paring the Hebrew religious movement with that which 
emerged in Islam — the difference between enslave- 
ment, defeat, and captivity disguising heavenly do- 
minion, and that kind of possession and conquest 
which is the dissipation of spiritual energy. 

The peace which the Hebrew loved, the longing for 
which led him inland while the adventurous Phoenician 
sought the mastery of the sea — that rest besought by 
the Psalmist, such as the clove seeks in its flight : these 
stand out in pathetic contrast against a troubled career 
of fiery trial and chastisement. It is just such a con- 
trast that impresses us in the personal life of Jesus, 
between the serenity of Galilee — that charmed circle 
of security from which he sends forth his defiance to 
Herod — and the fretful tumult, the cruel hostility of 
Jerusalem. The deepening of capacity is for the larger 
inclusion of pain and strife, as well as for that of a 
heavenly peace ; and so it was in the divine life of the 
Son of Man, who had not where to lay his head, who 
took the stings and arrows of every enmity, and who 
not merely suffered evil and death but included all 
evil and all death, so that his rising again might stand 
against all falling. He descended into hell, so enlarg- 
ing the scope of that descent that it emerged in heaven. 
Before him, neither in pagan nor Jewish thought, was 
such emergence conceived as possible, just as before 
him the mortal issue was not seen as life. 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 267 



XVIII 

The idea of heaven as the eternal habitation of souls 
freed from earthly bondage is so familiar to us that 
we are apt to forget that it is wholly a crea- 
tion of the Christ-life and the Christ-death, The Opening 

7 01 .Heaven. 

followed by his resurrection and ascension. 
The phrase " going to heaven " is strictly modern, and 
as indicating the direct destination of a departed spirit 
is quite wholly Protestant, since the great majority of 
Christians believe that there is an intermediate state. 
To the martyrs, as to Stephen, heaven seemed to open 
for their immediate reception ; but to the Lord himself 
there was no such invitation. Therefore he said to the 
penitent thief : " This day shalt thou be with me in 
Paradise " — meaning that happier part of Sheol allotted 
to the faithful. Hitherto, in the hope of pagan or of 
Jew, the movement of the soul had been arrested at 
this point, as if by fixed conclusion. The only He- 
brews in heaven w r ere those w r ho had been divinely 
translated thither — Enoch and Elijah, and, it was be- 
lieved, Moses ; besides these, it was the abode of God 
only and the angels. 

The Lord never directly promised his disciples en- 
trance to heaven, though intimating that in his Father's 
house were many mansions, and that he would prepare 
a place for them — praying, moreover, that where he 
was they might be also. The resurrection in which 
the Pharisees believed was a return to earthly em- 
bodiment and habitation. Only the Lord's ascension 
opened heaven. The Gentile Christians, by swift re- 



268 A STUDY OF DEATH 

action, readily accepted the idea of the supreme exalta- 
tion ; but the Hebrew, as shown in the Apocalypse of 
St. John, expected the descent upon the earth of a new 
Jerusalem. 

The idea of place, in this connection, has no impor- 
tance ; what is really significant is the ascension, as the 
complement of so deep descent — the escape from that 
old and sterile conclusion in Hades which had so long 
impressed the minds of men as something inevitable — 
the completion in ineffable light of the soul's wander- 
ing that hitherto seemed to have been arrested in dark- 
ness. The descent was not evaded ; death still awaited 
every man, and the grave deepened into the Inferno, 
but the cycle was completed, and what had been 
bounden was free — the bond itself finally shown as a 
home-bringing of God's children to the bosom of 
another Father than Abraham. 

It is interesting to trace the adumbration of this 
freedom in the Hebrew consciousness. The primitive 
thought of another world was backward and downward, 
but with the spirit of prophecy there was a turning of 
the face to the light, forward-looking. After the Cap- 
tivity the idea of angelic beings became more and 
more familiar to the Hebrew, mingling with his hope 
of resurrection, though the angels should descend to 
him rather than he should ascend to their abode. The 
Lord spoke of the children of the resurrection as be- 
coming like the angels in heaven. From this it was 
only a step to heaven itself — but that step halted. Then 
there was that last week in Jerusalem, with its gather- 
ing trouble, relieved by visits to the restful home of 
Mary and Martha in Bethany ; the raising of Lazarus, 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 269 

and the evident expansion of some mighty and lu- 
minous thought in the mind of Jesus, prophetic, absorb- 
ing, withholding itself from expression even to his disci- 
ples, as something they could not yet bear and which must 
await disclosure from the spirit — from that free spirit 
which was in him, made wholly free when he should 
"go away." Flesh and blood could not reveal it, but 
rather the vanishing of these. With the resurrection 
of the Lord — which, though it only brought him back to 
the light of earthly day, still seemed to remove him from 
the accustomed familiarity, so that he only at times 
suddenly appeared to them for brief converse and then 
as suddenly vanished — their spiritual sense was deep- 
ened. Their hearts burned within them while he talked 
with them on the way to Emmaus, showing them what 
was the real meaning of his sufferings and death and 
resurrection, as completing the divine mission of Israel 
in the person of the Messiah. "Ought not Christ to 
have suffered these things and to enter into his glory ?" 

The consummation of the lifting power of the life 
manifested in the Christ was reached in his ascension. 
He who had " descended into the lower parts of the 
earth . . . ascended up far above all heavens, that he 
might fill all things." The tree of Life could not fill 
the heavens till its roots had taken hold of the nether- 
most abyss. 

Therefore it is that, for the Christian, Death and 
Evil are deepened to the utmost, and in like manner 
the consciousness of Guilt, that nothing may be left 
outside of the comprehension of the lifting Life — that 
the ascent may " lead captivity captive." ' 



270 A STUDY OF DEATH 



XIX 



The Hebrew movement, thus consummated in the 
Christ-life, represents the. epos of the human soul, not 
in such terms as the ancient poets used in their epics 
celebrating heroic adventure — the quest of 
Hea^f sin W the Golden Flee ce or the taking of Troy— 
but far withdrawn from any idea of mere 
outward accomplishment and confined within the scope 
of a spiritual destiny expressed in terms of living guilt 
and living righteousness. 

Childhood is unmoral. It has the primary con- 
science, whose instinctive feeling is not expressed in 
abstractions or in such judgments as are ethical in our 
modern sense. It has natural control, a vital restraint, 
deeper and surer than that which is concerned with ex- 
ternal relations and consequences rationally considered. 
The Hebrew, keeping much of the plasticity of child- 
hood, had this living conscience, not merely in the 
sense in which all primitive tribes have it, but in that 
sense exalted, so that sin was felt to be blood-guiltiness, 
as violence of the bond of kinship between men and 
God. When the Prophet wished to convince David of 
his great sin, he did not refer to the broken law but to 
the home he had broken. So the Lord made the test 
of a divine judgment not any dogmatic or ethical con- 
dition, but only tenderness of heart toward all men as 
toward brethren ; as if this were itself the fulfilment 
of the law. He who was to come with the spirit and 
power of Elias was to turn the hearts of the fathers to 
the children, and of the children to the fathers : it was 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 271 

the concern of kinship. Paul's definition of " relig- 
ion pure and undefiled " points to the same living truth. 
Not moral perfection but newness of heart is the vital 
distinction : the newness is for tenderness. The idea 
of sin entertained by the Greek and Roman was con- 
fined to failure, with reference to that outward com- 
pleteness which was to them the chief end of life. 
The Greek word for sin means the falling short of a 
mark : some outward standard is implied. The older 
idea, expressed in the Latin ne-fas, was originally allied to 
the Hebrew sense of guilt ; but this meaning had been 
outgrown, surviving only in the lingering regard for the 
Lares and Penates, the deities of the hearth, and in that 
tenderness of piety which never became wholly extinct, 
and which, indeed, was the great softness that, turning 
into manly fibre, was the basis of Roman virtue and 
mastery. Rome made for herself a world of depend- 
ent children by somewhat the same quality as that 
whereby, maintained in its plasticity, the Hebrew be- 
came a Child for the world. 



XX 

The Hebrew movement, culminating in the Christ, 
was a discrete destiny, necessary, once and for all, to a 
singular issue — to the Appearing, in time and in the 
world and in human form, of Eternal Light and Love — 
an Appearing so wonderful that we ask how 

rr b The Issue. 

it could have been, and yet so longed for, 

and so resuming all other appearances in Nature and 

humanity, as their central illumination and essential 



272 A STUDY OF DEATH 

glory, that we ask how it could not have been ! God 
so loved the world: the world so desired God! Be- 
cause the sun is in the heavens the waters that run into 
the sea are lifted again to their native heights; and 
so, in all ways, is the pulsation of the physical earth 
maintained. How else could there be the full pulsation 
of the spiritual world save as its sun responded to the 
desire in the heart of man ? Christ is that Sun. We 
were in him, though we knew it not, and he appeared 
in us and to us. He descended and he arose, and he 
stood for our falling and rising, and we saw in him 
what we turn from, as worlds from their light and that to 
which, following the same old planetary habit, we for- 
ever return — what we deny and what we confess. Apart 
from this movement, which had for its issue the Eternal 
Child, full of grace and truth, shaping for us the lan- 
guage of a new kingdom, we should be at a loss, having 
no clew to our labyrinth leading outward into freedom, 
no escape from our entanglement. That which is hid- 
den could never have come to the light. 

To suppose this movement as not having been would 
be to suppose humanity — the ultimate specialisation of 
cosmic life — to be completely insulated, an island from 
which its embosoming ocean could at no point be seen. 
The spiritual loss might be compared to the sterile 
physical existence of man upon the earth, supposing 
human life to have no hidden fountain in its organic 
cell structure whence proceeds any child. The new- 
ness, of which the child is the symbol, is the charm of 
existence, the charm of an expansion renewed by at- 
traction, of desire renewed by death. As in the rising 
again of the Lord — the " one sign given unto men " — the 



A SINGULAR REVELATION 273 

way of death was seen to be the way of life, this re- 
surgence, to the early Christians, stood for a new child- 
hood ; it was the transcendent Nativity, whereby they 
were "the children of the Resurrection." 



CHAPTER II 
THE PAULINE INTERPRETATION 

It has been charged against Christianity that it looks 
ever toward a dying Lord, drawing always near to the 
grave, emphasising sin, also, as it does mortality, and 
clothing itself in a sorrowful habit, loving rather to 
dwell in the house of mourning than in that of feasting. 
This attitude has been contrasted with that of pagan 
philosophy, which appealed to aspiration and extolled 
virtue, finding the highest excellence in outward accom- 
plishment and inward serenity. 

As in no ancient faith was there the exaltation of a 
sure and steadfast hope such as lifted the heart of 
Israel, so was there never such a sunburst of dawn as 
that which exalted and illumined the hearts of the early 
Christians. Nevertheless it is true that these Chris- 
tians turned their faces away from the vision of any 
earthly sunrise, literally as well as figuratively faring 
westward, renouncing the hallowed traditions and as- 
sociations of the Holy Land, seeking discomfort, court- 
ing persecution, facing death in every Roman am- 
phitheatre, and leaving upon their tombs the only 
inscriptions of their faith recoverable from this period 
of their tribulation. 

The Apostles were the witnesses to an eternal verity, 
disclosed in their Lord's resurrection — that death is in- 



THE PAULINE INTERPRETATION 275 

deed the unseen angel of life, with wings that lifted to 
heights beyond the reach of mortal vision and earthly 
aspiration. Death had not befallen the Lord, but he 
had pursued death, had clothed himself in the mortal 
habit, and in its corruptible had shown its incorruptible. 
The followers of Christ, therefore, sought not safety; 
their pilgrimage was not away from the City of Destruc- 
tion but through its flaming streets. To them, indeed, 
every city, every structure which had been raised by 
human effort seemed about to fall. They were on fire 
within, and imagined a world on the verge of conflagra- 
tion ; the framework of Nature as of all human systems 
seemed "like an unsubstantial pageant" soon to dis- 
appear, dissolved in fervent heat. They built no church 
edifices and established no elaborately formal rites. 
They took no active part in the social or political func- 
tions of the world about them. 

St. John's Apocalypse and St. Paul's Epistles disclose 
in different ways the prevailing conviction that the end 
of things was at hand. In John's vision everything 
seemed to vanish before the " wrath of the Lamb." 
Paul looked for the speedy emancipation of a universe. 
John saw a new Jerusalem, Paul " a new creature." 
The Lord had said that the Gospel would be preached 
to all nations before the end of the world, and to them 
the swiftness and magnitude of the pentecostal revival 
seemed the beginning of a movement which would not 
halt short of its rapid consummation. St. James alone, 
with steadfast zeal for the ritual of his fathers, was 
conservative and temperate in his expectation, repre- 
senting ecclesiastical stability, and probably for this 
reason he gave more consideration to the ethical side 



276 A STUDY OF DEATH 

of a Christian life, emphasising the value of good 
works. 

Each of these apostles was mistaken in his forecast 
of the immediate future, though each, through the dis- 
tinct phase of his hope, contributed to the completeness 
of that testimony which is known to us as the " new 
testament.'' No greater confusion fell upon Peter 
when he reflected upon his denial of the Master than 
awaited James when he was overtaken by the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem ; and we can imagine the consterna- 
tion of John if he could have foreseen the position which 
was to be held in Christendom by that Rome upon which 
he saw emptied the vials of God's wrath, or that of 
Paul if he could have followed the lines of Christian 
development into an ecclesiasticism more elaborate than 
that of Jerusalem, and have seen the world which he felt 
crumbling beneath his feet enter upon an era of unprec- 
edented stability in every field of human activity. 

Paul's thought never crystallised into either a philo- 
sophic or theological system ; it was so close to a nas- 
cent and flaming life that it was luminous with its light 
and plastic to its creative spirit — a quickening spirit 
that impelled his swift journeyings over the whole known 
world even to its westernmost limits, and at the same 
time gave him the deepest insight into the mysteries of 
the Christian faith. 

It was because Paul's faith was fixed upon the invisi- 
ble and the eternal that the whole visible universe seemed 
to him so unstable. " The fashion of this world passeth 
away." This dissolving view was ever present to his 
mind, because he felt the power of a new creation. He 



THE PAULINE INTERPRETATION 277 

dwelt upon death because his chief theme was the res- 
urrection, and upon sin, which is the sting of death, be- 
cause for him had arisen the Sun of Righteousness. The 
principle of a new life dominated his thought. It was 
not a new life as having just begun to be. The power 
which raised Christ from the dead was the creative 
power from the beginning, hidden under the masque of 
Nature's bondage — hidden also in the heart of man. It 
was the power manifest in the world as a vital pre- 
destination, not to be thwarted by human traditions or 
aims 1 the power working in evil as well as in good, in 
the hardness of Pharaoh's heart as in the faith of Moses; 
the power of the law as well as the power of grace. 

In the light of the renascent spiritual principle, Paul 
saw a new humanity, as from a second Adam, and a new 
creation. A revelation had been made, which gave a 
new scope to human life, and a new meaning to the 
universe ; but it was the first purpose of the divine will 
for man and the world, though last in the express bright- 
ness of its manifestation. It was not a new cycle of 
human or cosmic life, but the completion of the old : 
the fulfilment of its divine meaning. The natural body 
was raised a spiritual body, and so the natural man was 
raised a spiritual man, growing into the stature of the per- 
fect man in Christ. The living soul, animating the flesh 
and boasting in the works of the flesh, was disclosed as 
the quickening spirit, one with the Father, and inspiring 
a universal fellowship, which had been from everlasting 
but was now for the first time luminously real to human 
faith. 

Paul regarded human destiny as inseparably bound 
up with that of the universe. The visible world, though 



278 A STUDY OF DEATH 

imaging the spiritual, "was made subject to vanity," 
under the bondage of corruption, and man, as a part of 
this creation, was under the same bondage, and there- 
fore mortal and sinful, the sting of death being sin and 
the strength of sin the law. The subjection was a di- 
vine limitation and was universal, pertaining to all visi- 
ble manifestation : it was not of the will of man but of 
God. As the whole order, seen in its natural operation 
in time, was clothed upon with the mortal habit, every 
structure being brought to naught and thus " subject to 
vanity," so in humanity there was a special death and a 
special evil. Sin was something more than was defina- 
ble in particular acts : it was a state. Thus Paul speaks 
of Christ, who knew no sin, as becoming Sin, wholly 
identified with man in his limitation. Paul emphasises 
the descent of Christ, thus bringing him into the estate 
of falling man. As Christ had all of death, in its essen- 
tial meaning, and yet saw not its corruption, so he took 
the inmost reality of sin in such wise that the divinity of 
it was blamelessly transparent in its humanity — its crim- 
son ever turning white, as was natural in a life essen- 
tially redemptive, and whose blood flowed for remission. 
He was the reconcilement of sin with the eternal life. 

Thus the bondage itself came to be seen as the bond 
of kinship : showing that originally it was this in its di- 
vine ordinance. 

Paul contrasts, by sharp antithesis, the works of the 
law with the operation of grace. But the law was, at its 
fountain, holy — a fatherly commandment, a gracious pro- 
vision suited to fallible humanity, and even with its thorns 
hedging in the truant nature, pricking the conscience, 
convincing of sin. While it hardened with the hardness 



THE PAULINE INTERPRETATION 279 

of the human heart, and the men who sat in Moses' 
seat laid upon the people burdens too grievous to be 
borne; while it became itself a part of the bondage, 
yielding to corruption, so that the works of the law par- 
took of the vanity of all outward accomplishment ; yet 
this very inanition was a preparation for the gospel of 
grace. Thus the law was a schoolmaster leading men 
to Christ. 

To Paul's vision was opened a spring-time for the 
whole world, with issues unforeseen, indeed, and im- 
measurable, but whose meaning had been fully dis- 
closed. A new principle, hitherto hidden beneath the 
mortal masque, was manifest. The followers of Christ 
need not turn away from death, or regret any outward 
desolation, however complete the divestiture. Death 
could not bankrupt life, being indeed its only solvency ; 
though it stripped the soul of its investment of good 
works as of all other vesture, the nakedness was that of 
the child of the kingdom of grace ; this absolution 
took no note of works of merit any more than of any 
other works. This death, moreover, unmasquing all else, 
put aside also its own disguise, repudiating mortality. 
But for this absolute newness there could be no deliv- 
erance from the body of death. 

So significant was the resurrection of Christ to Paul : 
the revelation of a new death hidden in the old, even 
as the spiritual principle is hidden in the visible world. 
What was implicit in the bondage had become explicit, 
a manifest redemption. A body inviolable and incor- 
ruptible had been returned from the grave, raised by a 
power which lifted it out of the closed circle of mor- 
tal change and progression in which the visible world 



280 A STUDY OF DEATH 

seemed locked — even lifted it up into heaven. The 
suspense was broken. This revelation had been made 
not in an analogue, or symbol appealing to the mind, 
but in an appearance to the sense — like a flash of the 
Eternal into Time — of a spiritual body. Thus was 
shown the fashion of the world to come, into "which all 
vanishing things were transformed, so that the univer- 
sality of death was the hope of the universe. 

It was not merely the illumination of a truth, but 
became a living, working principle. In its light the 
Christian could not only face death, but anticipate it 
by the inclusion of it in life, and thus bring into earth- 
ly manifestation the power of the resurrection, lift- 
ing up the spiritual man just as the nutrition and 
function of the physical man were from the inclusion 
of death for the resurgence and ascension of the or- 
ganism. 

This anticipation of death was the essential condi- 
tion of a new life, in a Christian fellowship, on earth. 
If the Kingdom of God was to have an earthly realisa- 
tion, it must be through dying daily, both for minis- 
tering and to be ministered unto. To become like 
children, after this new type of childhood, meant a 
withdrawal from the world for spiritual expansion at 
the same time that contacts with that world were mul- 
tiplied — channels for freely receiving and then for free- 
ly giving. Baptism was a burial with Christ that the 
Christian might rise again with him, lifted up by the 
same spirit. The burial and the rising, begun in this 
symbolic rite, were repeated continually in the pulsa- 
tion of Christian life — the vanishing side of which was 
a hiding with Christ, the return beat spiritually vital- 



THE PAULINE INTERPRETATION 281 

ising the outward body of the individual and social 
organism. On the one side the flesh was denied, on 
the other it was made the temple of God, and upon the 
heart of flesh was freshly inscribed the law in its origi- 
nal terms of love. 

The formal obedience of the law in every point could 
not in itself secure-deliverance from its bondage ; might, 
indeed, result in self-complacency and pharisaical self- 
justification, the very habit of such obedience becom- 
ing automatic routine, and ending in a stoical accept- 
ance of death. In this fulfilment the law destroyed 
itself, became crystallised in a heart of stone, losing its 
proper virtue in a life thus arrested, and death would 
be liberation only as breaking up the brittle structure 
and so forcing the final confession of a corruption re- 
sisted and denied but inevitable. On the other hand, 
the willing acceptance of the mortal state, its burdens 
and its bondage, by the tender hearts of God's children, 
judging not, repudiating merit, failing at every point, as 
fail they must, yet having faith in the Father's love, and 
lifted from every fall by His grace into living righteous- 
ness — this obedience is that love which fulfils the law, 
eclipsing and transcending its letter, and rising into its 
spirit. Thus are all systems, whatever virtue they may 
have, urged on to their mortal issue for the regenera- 
tion of goodness itself. 

The quickness of life, including death as itself a 
quickness, a lifting and transforming power, was re- 
creative, making a new or newly visible organisation 
of humanity in a spiritual body — a fellowship setting 
up new activities, nutritive and functional. As in the 



282 A STUDY OF DEATH 

animal organism the maintenance, through nutrition, 
of vital activity depends largely upon nitrogen, the 
most inert of all elements (excepting the recently 
discovered argon, an equally important constituent of 
the air we breathe), so the spiritually organic body 
includes for its nutrition the death and inertia of the 
human world. Its catholic kinship includes the out- 
cast, the reprobate, the utterly condemned, finding in 
the extremity of human wretchedness and sin the point 
of penitent return. 

It was God's pleasure in humanity that was the 
burden of the angels' song announcing to the shep- 
herds the birth of Jesus; and we may without pre- 
sumption interpret the heavenly voice declaring at 
Christ's baptism, " This is my beloved Son, in whom 
I am well pleased," as especially emphasising the ut- 
terance already made to the shepherds, and as cele- 
brating the new birth of humanity. 

We can imagine the change which came over the 
spirit of man's dream concerning himself and his 
earthly station when the Copernican astronomy dis- 
closed the fact that what had been thought the flat 
and inert earth — a condemned world, the degraded 
footstool of the universe, the alone dead and motion- 
less, and enclosing death and hell in its secret depths, 
as if these were its own peculiar possession — was it- 
self one of the celestial spheres, and so restored to its 
heavenly place and motion, no longer excommunicate. 
That catholicity which included it in the universal 
harmony made also a catholic distribution of such 
evil as had seemed its singular portion, and its cen- 
tral fires were seen to be like those which tormented 



THE PAULINE INTERPRETATION 283 

the bosoms of all the celestial wanderers. In the 
catholic life was included the catholicity of death. 

How much more glorious was the revelation through 
the Son of Man of the divine spiritual kinship, into 
whose bond was turned the bondage of every creature ! 
Man, the most fallible of all living beings, and who so 
accumulated death and evil that he seemed to monopo- 
lise corruption and to be inert — " dead in trespasses 
and sins" — was shown to be, because most lost, the 
best beloved. 

The charm and excellence of this new creation could 
not be expressed in the terms of physical sensibility, 
of mental appreciation, or even of ethical motives and 
restraints. All the sensations possible to the most ex- 
quisite bodily organism, heightened by aesthetic and 
intellectual refinement ; the sum of attainable power 
and virtue : these belonged to a world which had 
dwindled into insignificance in the presence of a king- 
dom whose activities were characterised by Paul as 
"the works of the spirit." The law of altruistic ser- 
vice and sacrifice had belonged to every order of exist- 
ence, and belonged also to the new, but was distinctive 
to the latter only through its heavenly transformation 
and reversion from the measurable merit and value, 
hitherto associated with its human expression, to the 
original and immeasurable grace which is the quality 
of a creative act. The Lord, as the bridegroom of 
humanity, lifts it into participation with himself in 
creative action, and in this conjugal relation human- 
ity is no limited saintly company, but a catholic and 
spontaneous fellowship. 

All were under sin, and in all the new creation was 



284 A STUDY OF DEATH 

redemptive, "especially in them that believed.'' While 
the tree is known by its fruits, and the early Christians 
showed an outward excellence beyond the require- 
ments of law and duty, yet those loving believers at- 
tached no merit to such performance, and, having 
done all, deemed themselves unworthy, and as falling 
short of the divine glory revealed to their anointed 
eyes. No sum of deeds could fill out the measure of a 
life which was supremely Being above all Doing. The 
deed could not seem to them other than decrepit, like 
the blossom that withers and the fruit that falls. They 
tried with glowing lips to tell men what the new crea- 
tive principle was, but none could understand who 
had not their spiritual experience. Paul said it was 
Love, and then described every known manifestation of 
love as falling short thereof ; for how is one to know 
Love save in the wonder of what it is above all it can 
do ? It is a creative power, but the creature falls into 
impotence. 

As a social power, in its primitive manifestation, 
Christianity converted altruism into identification. The 
neighbor was loved not as another, but as the self of 
the lover. Sacrifice was the blending of the human 
with the divine will ■ not renunciation for mere loss or 
divestiture, but for recovery. Suffering was incident- 
ally, and in the sequence of things in time, a discipline, 
but in the eternal meaning was one with the divine 
passion from the beginning, and as belonging to a liv- 
ing creation. Death and sin were involved in the 
resurrection and redemption whereby man became a 
new creature. 

Paul's idea of dying to sin was not that of ascetic 



THE PAULINE INTERPRETATION 285 

mortification ; he meant thereby a dying to the dying 
environment of the old creature and living to that of 
the new. Instead of escaping from a sinful world, he 
sought every possible contact with it, knowing that 
where sin abounded there did grace much more abound. 
The seed of the kingdom was sown in corruption. 

Thus the Christ-life took possession of the world 
with no dainty selection, but, seizing upon the worst, 
brought out of it an excellence far exceeding what had 
been found in the best. Only a creative and trans- 
forming life, drawing its inspiration from a heavenly 
source, could have so confidently leaned to all human 
moods, following them into their faltering descents, in- 
dulgent and compassionate. Thus primitive Christian- 
ity followed the pagan world into its own Sacred Mys- 
teries. Paul used the very terms associated with these 
for the illustration of spiritual truth. The pagan con- 
verts were baptised under a formula conveying the 
thought so familiar to them, and so repugnant to the 
Hebrew, of a diversified divine manifestation in three 
persons. 

Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles, as " all things to 
all men," turned his face quite away from Jerusalem 
and toward the Western world. In his catholicity was 
that world fully embraced, while in his doctrine of elec- 
tion was expressed the principle of integration, the 
principle of the church militant in the development of 
Christendom. 



CHAPTER III 
CHRISTENDOM 

I 

The nihilism of the mystic, if cherished for its own 
sake, would be disintegration, refusing investiture, a 
sterile simplicity. 

The idea that we should attain supreme felicity if we 
could put aside all veils forever and in a pure spiritual 
vision always behold God face to face is a dazzling 
conjecture. Suppose a planet to be able to refuse 
separation from her sun, would her eternal identifier 
tion with her lord be any true union — like 

Espousals. . . . . • . 

the " union in partition which she enjoys 
in all her varied life ? Or, if she might choose, having 
set out upon her wanderings, to retain her similitude 
to him — to be forever self-luminous, herself always just 
another sun, would she not, through lack of contra- 
diction, miss the ultimate dramatic excellence and de- 
light of her destiny ? 

For, see what happens to the Earth because of her 
apparent loss and self-desolation. Coming into her hard 
limitations, she has the inestimable honour of preparing 
a bridal chamber for the Sun, being nearer and dear- 
er to her lord in her set distance than if she had for- 
ever rested in his bosom, for now he rests in hers. As 



CHRISTENDOM 287 

the mother cell is separate from the father cell, so that 
the latter must go forth, like a hunter to the chase, to 
possess its sundered mate, so it is in this mystical 
attraction, first seen as repulsion, which is the charm 
that binds the Earth to her bridegroom. 

Has she pride that she, as it seems to her, is the cen- 
tre and he the satellite ? Or, rather, is it her modesty 
that she imputes to herself all the inertia and to him 
all the motion ? Really the motion is of neither to the 
other as to a centre, but both are possessed by the same 
motion, which is not material but of the spirit. Their 
union is but the expression of the eternal consubstan- 
tiation. 

The gain of this planetary bride, the Earth, is through 
what she has given up. Because of her distance she 
can be visited by her lord. Divesting herself of her 
own garment of light, she can be clothed upon with 
his ; hiding her own fires, she can be sensible of his 
joyous warmth in manifold intimacy. Brought to 
very barrenness in the diminution of her own force 
and swiftness, it is given her to sing the virgin's Mag- 
nificat, and to know that all born of her are the chil- 
dren of the Sun. There is healing in his touch, 
and all that she perforce distils of poison and bitter- 
ness — all the maladies of her desolate nights — yield to 
his radiant strength. With her he sups and takes up 
his abode, knowing no delight or charm in the vast 
distance traversed by his swift wings until he keeps 
tryst with her. Here only, and not in that blank 
space, has his face brightness and colour; here only 
is there for him nutrience and increase and content. 
This is the garden of his love ; of his labour, also, since 



288 A STUDY OF DEATH 

here are done his mighty works for his children ; and 
of his death, since virtue goes out of him with every 
revival of earthly life, until he wears the wan smile of 
the physician who saves not himself — like the sunset 
benediction in the face of Heracles when, after his 
grim struggle, he brought Alcestis back to the halls of 
Admetus, having himself taken the chill and the mys- 
terious silence. 

So is it with all espousals. The union is because of 
divulsion, and has the value of distance ; its intimacies 
have their ground in distinction, which becomes con- 
tradiction, like that of a planet to its sun ; its special 
activities and capacities seek sequestration in a limited 
field, " an enclosed garden," sometimes curtained in by 
the darkness and again veiled by the light ; its investi- 
ture is mortal and its fruition is death. 

The spiritual espousal, wherein humanity is united 
with the Lord, is not only catholic, including all the 
elements in a human world, but, whatever may be its 
heavenly consummation, is, in its earthly expression 
and as a visible manifestation, a limited estate, involv- 
ing conditions such as attend all other espousals : on 
the Bride's part a destination separating her from the 
Bridegroom, and in many ways seeming a contradiction 
of her inmost desire for Him, so that she becomes a 
poor starveling, a distraught and desolate Psyche, be- 
reft of Love ; and on the part of the Bridegroom a run- 
ning after her, as if in answer to some great need and 
hunger developed in her desolation, as if He had in- 
dulged her aversion that He might follow her into her 
darkest hiding, standing at her door and knocking while 



CHRISTENDOM 289 

His locks are wet with the cold dews of her night — He 
also having veiled His essential might and brightness 
lest she should be dismayed at His coming, yet re- 
taining enough of His original majesty that she may 
see Him as the one altogether lovely, the wonderful. 

Such, at least, is the modest human regard of this 
spiritual marriage, which includes and transcends all 
the other espousals for which the world is made : the 
Bride taking upon her all the blame, the reproach of 
her very destiny. This has been the cry of the human 
soul since its bondage began : Mine is the shame, the 
low estate ; there is none good but the One. But all 
ways the Bridegroom answered : Fear not, in thee only 
is My delight ; Mine is the darkness and the evil, and 
no glory belongs to Me that is not also thine. These 
are the everlasting Canticles. 

This similitude of a conjugal relation between man 
and the Lord has been a symbol familiar to the re- 
ligious thought of the race in all ages, from the Vedic 
Hymns to Swedenborg, and is especially frequent in 
Hebrew prophecy. Science shows that all cosmic life 
is expressed through repulsions turned into attractions 
and affinities — what seems repulsion being itself an 
undisclosed, or hidden, attraction ; and if we substi- 
tute living terms for these, we see that universally Nat- 
ure is the harmony of conjugal associations, in all of 
which the primary note seems to emphasise disjunc- 
tion. 



290 A STUDY OF DEATH 



II 

Now when the Bridegroom was seen as Emmanuel, 
in whom were manifest the power and wisdom of crea- 
tive Life that had been hidden beneath veils 

Continuance 

of the through which now it shone ; when he was 
on age. j^gj^g fae sick and making the blind to see 
and releasing the captives of every earthly bondage, it 
seemed then to those who witnessed these things that 
the bondage itself was ended. " If thou hadst been 
here, our brother would not have died," said the two 
sisters of Lazarus. And seeing in him this Life as not 
only curative but redemptive, men said that now there 
need be no more sin, since here was a living stream 
which turned its scarlet white. 

But while they were saying this the Bridegroom said, 
"I must go away." 

So the sun had nightly left the Earth to her dark- 
ness and yearly to her winter, since the Night and the 
Winter had their own work to do with the Earth — the 
very complement of his. 

When the Lord left men to their old bondage of 
death and sin ; left even those whom he had healed or 
raised from the dead to yet again sicken and die — it 
was evident that it was no part of his mission to abol- 
ish the captivity or to reverse the lines of development 
in the world or in man as connected with the world. 
As we have seen, the creative life manifest in him was 
a singular illumination of what this life had been doing 
in the world and in man ; it was a revelation of the 
truth hidden in the bondage itself, and to be expressed 



CHRISTENDOM 291 

only in its fulfilment ; and since it was the life of the 
Father in him, it was something more than a disclosure, 
transforming man's view of his finite, mortal, and sinful 
state : before it could be this marvellous revelation, it 
must be creative in the human heart, making therein a 
kingdom, whose principle was a working power in the 
world, having, indeed, a worldliness of its own in a visi- 
ble social organism, and at the same time making for 
heavenliness — for an estate native to man as the 
child of God and the heir to eternal life, for a king- 
dom not of this world. It was to be at once an earthly 
unfolding and a heavenly involution. It was for this in- 
volution that the Bridegroom must go away. There was 
a World to Come, a new habit and habitation, a trans- 
formed Bridegroom accordingly. "I go to prepare a 
place for you." The new expansion involved new 
distance. " And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men 
unto me." Moreover, for the completion of his revela- 
tion he must show not only the creative life, but that 
Death is creative. He must die for resurrection — to 
give the note of the new harmony, the theme of the 
spiritual life. 

If the Lord had remained forever, continuing his 
manifestation of the Creative life, annulling sickness 
and death and sin, as well as all natural evil, instead of 
unmasquing all these, then all the discords attendant 
upon this harmony, which is the one known to us here, 
would have been resolved not positively but by nega- 
tion. The harmony itself would be confined within its 
own null perfection, with no openness to a World to 
Come. It would have been an arrest of creation ; nay, 
more, it would have been a consummate illustration of 



292 A STUDY OF DEATH 

the folly of creation itself, which eternally includes 
the Evil, and in every new specialisation — in human 
existence most of all — accumulating and exaggerating 
the Evil. 



Ill 

There must be the full human comprehension of 
Evil, like the divine comprehension, before we can un- 
derstand that our inheritance of the earth is of all des- 
tinies known to us the most glorious — the ultimate ex- 
pression, so far as we yet know, of the divine will and 
^ u „.,_ pleasure. The sense of this is our only as- 

The Hidden r J 

Glory of our surance of a more glorious world to come. 
y le ' For what hope have we if the Father's work 
hitherto has so far miscarried that redemption must 
mean the reversal of its whole procedure in Time? 
Surely we derive no help or consolation from the belief 
that either fallen man or fallen angels have been able 
to oppose His will with even temporary success. 

The difficulty or problem is not in the divine crea- 
tion, but in our partial conception of it. What seems 
to us an opposition or resistance to the divine will is an 
essential element in its operation. There is no reason- 
ableness in the supposition that God created Evil in or- 
der that He might destroy it, or that the specialisation of 
life should have its ultimate issue in a human conscious- 
ness involving not merely fallibility, but falling, as the 
very condition of its progress, in order that He might 
redeem man from that estate. Evil is not for the sake 
of Good. While it is true that life is from death, that 
good comes from evil, and that pain is a discipline, yet 



CHRISTENDOM 293 

these issues are no adequate explication of death, evil, 
and pain. Our idea of the good is as partial as that of 
the evil, and the deeper our insight the more difficult it 
becomes to separate the one from the other, each in- 
deed being comprehensible only in terms of the other ; 
in a vision perfectly whole Evil would be seen to be the 
other name of Good. In the series of creative special- 
isations the more advanced and complex existence 
multiplies and emphasises all that goes under either 
name, not because evil is necessary to good or good to 
evil, but because the reality underlying either concep- 
tion is essential and eternal — proper to Life. Lucifer 
is Light-bearer, the morning star, and whatever disguises 
he may take in falling, there can be no new dawn 
that shall not witness his rising in his original bright- 
ness. 

Nothing can be whole, or positively holy, which does 
not include evil, the negation of which would also annul 
goodness. We say that God makes the wrath of man 
to praise Him : aye, and but for wrath, human and di- 
vine, there would be neither praise nor praiseworthiness. 
Hate is Love's other name, as Evil is that of Good. 

Christ came not to destroy or to reverse the Father's 
work, but to fulfil it. 

In the bewilderment of our Garden, so enclosed, 
whose springs are hidden and whose fountains sealed, 
w r here we have eaten of one tree while a sword guards 
the other ; where Love takes on the masques of an- 
ger and hate, emphasising division and strife; where 
pleasure begins and ends in pain ; where motion begins 
in disturbance and ends in ruin ; and where the ad- 
vance of life and the enhancement of its charms are 



294 A STUDY OF DEATH 

through the more and more complicate involvement of 
bondage, through the multiplication of perils and solic- 
itudes, and through a constantly increasing capacity 
for the inclusion of death as well as an accumulation 
outwardly of the mortal structure and fabric : in this 
estate the stress and travail are conspicuous, and the 
glory of our existence is hidden. But it is only that 
the Bridegroom may surprise us. shining through every 
fold of our heavy vesture, lifting the clouds in our 
sky. lightening our burdens, disclosing the redemptive 
course of evil and unmasquing death. To His vision 
the glory of our earthly life is ever open, tempting Him 
to share it (as it does the angels), and leading Him on 
to His incarnation. We look upon this glory in Him 
as a divine disclosure, but it is a re-presentation to us 
of our humanity, and He stands for us and falls for us, 
in our image, so that we may comprehend our standing 
and falling, in His image. 

Redemption is the other name of creation — the lu- 
minous reflection and complement of all in creative 
specialisation that we call evil. 



IV 

The bondage, then, is continued and completed in 
the spiritual organisation which we know as Chris- 
tendom, and which is the coming in ail flesh 

Fallibility in °f tne Kingdom whose principle Was ex- 
Christian Ex- pressed in the Lord incarnate — expressed 

penence. 

for what it is essentially, as the principle 
of an eternal life. 



CHRISTENDOM 295 

The Bridegroom was always visiting humanity before 
He came in the flesh, and always had a spiritual king- 
dom in human hearts. After His ascension, in a body 
already adumbrating that wherewith all the Children of 
the Resurrection shall hereafter be clothed, He was still 
a real presence in His earthly kingdom — a kingdom in- 
cluding all the evil of the world and all that belongs to 
man in his sinful and mortal estate. Even the regen- 
erate, while in the flesh, retain the fallibility which hu- 
manity has had from the beginning : only it has for 
them its full meaning. The increase and progression of 
the spiritual life in all outward embodiment and devel- 
opment is a planetary wandering, a prodigal exile, show- 
ing often a ragged vesture, and full of repentances. 
The authority of this life, being one with its growth, 
does not exclude but depends upon the human fallibil- 
ity. It is an experience. 

The ecclesiastical not less than the secular history of 
Christendom is an illustration of fallibility as a condi- 
tion of progress. The movement is a succession of 
nights and mornings, of stumblings and ascents. Al- 
ways the aversion from the Bridegroom is followed by 
a fuller reception of Him. Often it seems that Christ 
is asleep in his disciples' bark while the storm is brew- 
ing : nevertheless, the storm is his as is the calm. 



In the Christian world outside of the ecclesiastical 
system all development seems to contradict the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, and this opposition follows the 



296 A STUDY OF DEATH 

laws of life expressed in all organic structure and func- 
tioning since the world began. Only thus 
0I1 cf the 10D does Christianity maintain its existence as a 
System to its WO rking power in human society. The king- 
dom of God on earth is an integration — not 
merely an inward wholeness, as it was in the singular 
destiny of the Hebrew people, but an outward organ^ 
isation seeking completeness in polity, art, philosophy, 
and ethics ; and the more earnestly it pursues these 
lines the more it has of inward grace, vitality, and il- 
lumination. The glory of Christianity is chiefly mani- 
fest in that it is a continually lifting and transforming 
power notwithstanding its inclusion of evil, nay, by 
virtue thereof, since no new ascent is made save through 
descent and apparent recession. 

Christian peoples accept the vital principle illumi- 
nated by Hebrew prophecy and by the life and teach- 
ings of Jesus, but they do not repeat the process through 
which that luminous revelation was vouchsafed to them. 
Rather they appear to contradict it, seeking especially 
that outward excellence and accomplishment which were 
denied to the Hebrew exemplar. Nor does the indi- 
vidual Christian repeat the divestiture of the Lord's 
life. He follows, but he avoids the exact similitude. 
The original exemplar, bringing into clear light what 
had been hidden, would have been marred and con- 
fused by that outward fabric and equipment which had 
always been its obscuration, Emphasis given to even 
the outward moral habit would have disguised the light of 
life. Nevertheless, the very elements which would have 
blurred the central light — which had indeed hidden it 
from the beginning, and which will continue to veil it in 



CHRISTENDOM 297 

every earthly manifestation of it to the end — are neces- 
sary to any orderly planetary system revolving about it. 
The development of the Mosaic Law obscured its 
original principle. Pagan systems in like manner veiled 
and in the end perverted and disguised the bright truths 
which irradiated and graced their beginnings. The in- 
stitutions which had so stable, so vast, and so complex 
development in the Roman Empire were woven into a 
fabric of conventional habit and tradition which became 
dull and lifeless. Such reaction as gave them any 
bright illusion came from no zeal like that of the Hebrew 
prophets, but chiefly from the poets and philosophers 
inspired by Greek culture • it was not radical in reaction, 
and it antagonised structural degeneration rather than 
the systems themselves, whose dissolution was necessary 
to any genuine renascence. The old sentiment of kin- 
ship was weakened, while the lines of caste became more 
rigid ; social amenities consisted with fine cruelties ; civic 
grandeur and formal justice tended to exclude living 
graces, until the only really vital current was the life of 
the lowly people, broken and downcast, and so prepared 
to receive the Christian Gospel, while the hard, artificial 
crust, lifted far above the stream, awaited the hammer 
of the Goth which was to break it in pieces. Yet in all 
these systems are found mundane charms, not appar- 
ent in Hebraic life, which are associated only with the 
finesse of culture in manners, literature, and art, being 
inseparable from a stable order of things having the fe- 
icity of outward completeness, in a movement not hasti- 
ly arrested by violence from without, by holy zeal, or by 
prophetic paralysis, but allowed its natural modulation 
and conclusion. 



298 A STUDY OF DEATH 

Because the Hebrew race, or that remnant of it which 
was held to its peculiar destiny, was withheld from the 
outward accomplishments which have constituted the 
greatness of other peoples, it is not therefore to be ac- 
cepted as the model of national development. The 
little child is the type of the spiritual life of the Chris- 
tian; but the Christian is not therefore denied the sturdy 
maturity of manhood. The ethical conception of the 
Greek, Roman, or modern world is not prominent in the 
Sermon on the Mount, but we are not therefore called 
upon to repudiate ethics, or even that social specialisa- 
tion of morality which seems to contradict the words 
of the Master. We do not instruct our police to ignore 
the overt act and to regard only the inward motive ; we 
maintain our conventional procedure in government and 
in all social functions ; and in the conduct of our indi- 
vidual life we do not practise celibacy because the 
Lord did not marry ; though he said, Give to him that 
asketh, we do not indulge ourselves in indiscriminate 
alms - giving, nor do we discard prudence because he 
said, Take no thought for the morrow. 

The disintegration of Hebrew life and that divesti- 
ture which characterised the life of the Lord and his 
disciples served a singular purpose for all humanity, 
baring the inmost heart, the supreme desire, "the one 
thing needful." That purpose was served so effectively 
that the true Christian can never lose sight of the spir- 
itual principle. While there are circumstances in which 
men who would secure the greatest fruitfulness of work 
for others must be <: eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heav- 
en's sake," freshly illustrating the central principle of 
their faith, yet from the foundation laid by these must 



CHRISTENDOM 299 

be erected a superstructure which shall at the same time 
express the divine-human fellowship and the economies 
of a complex social order, civil, moral, intellectual, aes- 
thetic, and industrial. There are times when the preach- 
er must take the humble garb of the prophet, and, like 
St. Francis of Assisi, teach the lesson of poverty ; and 
there are periods of wide-spread corruption and dead 
formalism, when superstructures must be destroyed, and 
the over-ripe and morbid summer, vaunting her distain- 
ment and reeking in wantonness, must yield to the 
rigour and release of winter. But for Puritan, Methodist, 
and Quaker — for all the prophets of divestiture — there 
is the spring-time also and the foison of another 
summer. 



VI 

Either season has its evils as well as its goods ; its 
characteristic violence, whether it be the fanaticism of 
destruction or the madness of merrymaking : and its 
peculiar grace, whether it be that of candid „,, 

1 ... . T,le Summer 

and unyielding virtue, or that of virtue's sac- and winter 
rifice. Christianity frankly owns both sea- 
sons. The Lord himself, in the most sublime utterance 
that ever fell from human lips, said : " Whereunto then 
shall I liken the men of this generation ? . . . They are 
like unto children that sit in the marketplace, and call 
one to another ; which say, We piped unto you, and ye 
did not dance ; we wailed, and ye did not weep. For 
John the Baptist is come eating no bread nor drinking 
wine j and ye say, He hath a devil. The Son of man 
is come eating and drinking ■ and ye say, Behold, a 



300 A STUDY OF DEATH 

gluttonous man. and a v.inebibber, a friend of publi- 
cans and sinners! Bur wisdom is justified of all her 
children.' 1 

It is the bridegroom's presence that prompts the fes- 
tival, and in his absence there is fasting. Devoid as 
was the life of Christ of everything associated with ma- 
terial wealth and worldly pomp, yet the seed of his 
kingdom, which in him suffered death, divesting itself 
of every outward integument, so that it was seen in the 
naked essence of its germinant power, was to abound in 
the world because of that death, showing its heave 
might in earthly investiture. 

Christ as a Prophet reversed the prophet's primitive 
habit. Among all Oriental peoples the earliest mani- 
festation of prophecy was attended with a kind of 
frenzy, with wild antics, repellent yet fascinating and 
awe-inspiring, like the frantic mood of a Delphic priest- 
ess. Islam began in epilepsy. Prophecy in these as- 
pects is corrosive and like a biting frost, with an eager 
momentum of destruction. It tears away all veils, as 
does insanity, and dispels illusions. Life in its fresh 
vigour turns away from this hoary violence and seeks 
investment and plenitude, dramatic masques, the full 
volume of its harmony, the momentum of its process 
But this movement also comes into its fever and d:; 
violence. 

Storage is for expenditure, and the expenditure runs 
into ruin, so that there seems to be the divine law of im- 
poverishment, bringing desire back to its hunger. But 
the hungry are blessed only because they shall be filled. 
If one rests in the hunger for its own sake, then has it 
eatei peril than gluttony and drunkenness, as is il- 



CHRISTENDOM 3 01 

lustrated in the temptations of St. Anthony. The empty 
room, swept and garnished, is especially prepared for 
demoniacal possession. 

The Messiah did not come to men as an impalpable 
ghost (even after his resurrection), inviting them to dis- 
embodiment. Rather was our human flesh as dear to 
him as that of children to their mother, and never in 
word of his was there any animadversion upon our 
carnal plight. He enjoyed the festival, and even turned 
water into wine for those already well-drunken. 



VII 

While the deepest spiritual insight reverts to the Child 
Jesus and to the plasticity of the Christian type in his 
followers ; to the love which judgeth not and thinketh 
no evil, yet it is a view which may be so held 
as to arrest all development, and to neutralise ^theses." 
Christianity as an organ of social movement 
and as a working power in the world. The injunc- 
tion to turn the other cheek also to the smiter is one 
that if followed would truly express the spiritual at- 
titude of the Christian toward all men, as preferring 
peace to strife. But the Lord himself gave quite anoth- 
er view of the practical operation of Christianity as a 
promoter of strife, setting a man at variance with those 
of his own household. " The zeal of thine house hath 
eaten me up ;" but this zeal for the inmost Presence be- 
came in the outer court a flagellation of those who made 
it a den of thieves. He bade his disciples to pray in 
secret to Him who seeth in secret, and in alms-giving to 



302 A STUDY OF DEATH 

not let the left hand know what the right hand doeth — 
as if goodness had only a hidden excellence, and should 
be removed from the field of self-consciousness. Yet 
he bade them let their light shine before men that these 
might see their good works. The children of the house- 
hold were free from obligation to Caesar, yet he advised 
the payment of the tribute. The miracle was the sign of 
the hidden potency of the life that was in him, but he 
exercised this power reluctantly, and declared wicked 
and adulterous the generation seeking the sign. " If 
they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they 
be persuaded, if one rise from the dead." 

The principle of the heavenly kingdom was flexible, 
spontaneous in its operation, as of a spirit that is like 
the wind, which bloweth where it listeth, and thou 
canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth. 
Yet in many ways the Lord recognised as necessary an 
order which tends to hardness and firm stability, as of 
a house founded upon a rock. The hard lines of de- 
velopment are not ignored. Strait is the gate, and 
narrow is the way. Strive to enter in. Thou knewest 
that I was a hard master, gathering where I have not 
strewn ; therefore even thy one talent must not be 
hidden, but must return to me with usury. Seek, and ye 
shall find , knock, and it shall be opened unto you. By 
their fruits ye shall know the Children of the Father. 

Christ himself had come into an order more ancient 
than the earth ; he had always been in it, the creative 
life thereof, determining its course ; but he had now 
come into it as man, with all the passions of a man, 
with all the limitations of a human consciousness ; and 
he had come into it not for its abrogation but for its 



CHRISTENDOM 303 

fulfilment. Christianity was in its organisation to be 
the fulfilment for man of his destiny in the course 
already begun, including all human elements ; it was to 
be an order as an organised human experience. With 
the harmlessness of the dove was to be united the 
wisdom of the serpent — that very wisdom which led 
man out of Eden. 

The divine temptation leads us into the illusions of 
the phenomenal world. The divine redemption partici- 
pates in these illusions. The coming of the Lord was 
an appearing. But he made all veils transparent. 



VIII 

Any religious system which should profess to rend 
all veils , which should attempt the abrogation of time 
and the world, and of the desire which makes 
its way outwardly into worldly embodiments ExtremeTof 
and constructions, would rest in Buddhistic Religious 

Systems. 

nihilism. This is " the will not to live," the 
characteristic, or rather the characterless, aim of Scho- 
penhauer's pessimistic philosophy. It is not one with 
the divine will, and it is not an acceptance or compre- 
hension of that will, but is rather its repudiation. 

Mahometanism, going to the other extreme, even 
promising to its adherents a sensual Paradise, frankly 
accepts all illusions, but makes them the everlasting 
cerements of the soul. Islam is the modern Ishmael, 
whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand 
against him. This faith began in the insanity of the 
prophetic function unaccompanied by prophetic insight; 



304 A STUDY OF DEATH 

began in brutalities, and has progressed through con- 
quest based upon insolence and signalised by its atroci- 
ties. It is perversely dissociative, incapable of catholic 
fellowship, or even of coherence among its own constitu- 
ents. It has been of service to the modern world chief- 
ly as a menace and a challenge, holding shrines not 
its own, and so provoking the crusades, and promoting 
organisation as against itself, very much as Napoleon 
caused the rehabilitation of Europe as the sole means 
of its security against his inordinate rapacity. 

Christendom, mainly Indo-European in its constitu- 
tion ; anti-Semitic, though deriving its religious inspira- 
tion from the Hebrew; in its westward course of empire 
never wholly losing its inward orientation, has been al- 
lowed its steady growth because the monstrous aggre- 
gations of humanity in Asia have slumbered, the [Mos- 
lem alone having shown a strong hand, but disturbing 
only to stimulate. 

IX 

The Christianity which has made this Christendom 
did not owe its first expansion in the West to its organ- 
isation. It was in its plastic childhood, and when it- 
seemed most averse to worldly offices and 
Christianity emoluments, when its ritual was a simple, 
homely affair not yet associated with Church 
edifices, that it established its contacts with the world, 
spreading as a gentle insinuation throughout the Roman 
empire. This was also the time of its inspired writings. 
The wonderful expansion and inspiration were miracles 
such as belong to infancy, spontaneous manifestations 



CHRISTENDOM 305 

native to the spirit and not apparent, but rather obscured 
in later periods of structural development. A mighty 
wave of heavenly strength and peace seemed to pass 
over the whole earth, quite in accord with the condi- 
tions of the general armistice then prevailing, and espe- 
cially comfortable to the down-trodden and distressed 
poor, to whom no worldly armistice brought rest or con- 
solation. The Gospels and the Epistles breathed the 
spirit of love and peace, bidding men love one another 
and bear each other's burdens. At Jerusalem, where 
there was the greatest tenacity of the old forms, and 
also the insistence upon justification by works, before the 
name of Christian was adopted by the Church, the fol- 
lowers of Jesus in a singular manner illustrated the gra- 
cious spirit of a new faith in a communistic ejconomy. 
It was a mode of life that could not be maintained, and 
the Christians at Jerusalem became, in consequence of 
it, a burden upon the Western churches ; but it lasted 
long enough to find expression in the sublime ethics of 
St. James's Epistle, which shows what the moral order 
may become when wholly vitalised by the spirit of 
Christ, and when society, though it may not have be- 
come communistic, shall in its economic expression 
have reconciled with the law of Love all the competi- 
tions and antagonisms necessary to outward integration 
and development. This reconcilement is indicated in 
those words of the Lord, not recorded in the gospels, 
but quoted in early Christian writings : " When the out- 
side is as the inside, then the kingdom of heaven is 
come." Only in that consummation visibly realised 
could we see what was the scope of the kingdom deter- 
mined in its marvellous germination. The definite an- 



306 A STUDY OF DEATH 

ticipation of the issue is not possible even in the most 
hopeful dream of the optimist. 

In a very vital sense there was organisation even in 
this earliest manifestation of Christianity. The fellow- 
ship was itself a living organism, a vine with tender 
branches widely and swiftly spreading, throwing its soft 
tendrils about the hearts of the lowly, and thus for a 
long time escaping the notice of the powerful. This 
was its native disposition, following closely the ways of 
the Master. We think of it as a power building up 
from the bottom, and so it was, if we consider only its 
main constituency ; but in a society like that of the 
pagan world at this period — a world prepared for its 
own dissolution, and expecting, as in a dream, some 
transformation from a mysterious source — there are al- 
ways wise men, and wise especially in the culture of the 
heart, to whom nothing human is alien ; who for human- 
ity are willing to give up class, in an order where no 
class is fortunate and all are at a loss ; who are looking 
for some new star of hope in their heavens. To such 
men Christianity from the first made a strong appeal, 
and they naturally became the leaders of the people. 
Others there may have been, men of religious zeal and 
high intellectual attainments, who, like Saul of Tarsus, 
first came into contact with the Christians as their per- 
secutors, and, seeing in the new faith a greater motive 
for their zeal, became its ardent adherents. 



CHRISTENDOM 307 



X 



Certainly the ecclesiastical organisation must have 
been far advanced, and must have shown a disposition 
toward authority and influence in society and the State, 
when Constantine became the champion of Christianity, 
and took its symbol of the cross as the sign through 
which his armies should become victorious. 

When at a later period the Church came into close 
alliance with the State, becoming the arbiter of empires, 
its organisation as a world-power had com- 
plete development, entering into the full am- vafchurdT 
plitude of its earthly investiture. Catholic 
brotherly love was at the heart of it, and in every fold 
of its garment. It was the cosmic order of the Lord's 
spiritual kingdom — the field of the Lord's espousal 
with humanity. That was a true pontificate which 
bridged all the chasms between social classes — be- 
tween wealth and poverty, culture and ignorance, mas- 
tery and service, and also between heavenly grace and 
the arbitrary limitations of formal justice. It was such 
a hierarchy as naturally found its typical representative 
in St. Augustine. 

The Church had placed in the hands of the Roman 
Pontiff not only the crosier, but also the sword and scep- 
tre ; and the social order of Christendom in the mediae- 
val period could not otherwise have been established 
and maintained on a Christian basis. Not less but 
more than in the age of primitive Christianity was this 
organisation the embodiment of the Spirit, for, though 
the pentecostal flame was hidden, yet it was the same 



308 A STUDY OF DEATH 

flame that vitalised the whole structure in its vigorous 
growth for the full measure of its beneficent ministra- 
tion. The dove, which is the emblem of the Holy Spirit, 
because it has wings for flight, does not therefore make 
his fixed abode in the heavens, but rather descends and 
makes his home among the haunts of men. The min- 
istration of the Spirit is by descent. It was so in the 
Christ ; it is so in the Church, which as a fellowship is 
everlasting, but which as visibly manifested in any spe- 
cial embodiment has a beneficence in its expenditure 
and even in its disintegration measured by the degree 
in which it has received and manifested the spirit of 
fellowship. As a world-power an ecclesiastical, like any 
other organism, rises to the height from which it may 
most beneficently fall. 

That alliance of Church and State in which the former 
was authoritatively dominant lasted long enough to se- 
cure its ends ; and during this period the wisdom of the 
serpent, so necessary to its efficiency, was fully evident 
in its practical working and in its development of dog- 
ma. The exigencies of the ecclesiastical situation de- 
manded a dramatic theology as well as a dramatic 
ritual ; and in both became manifest the inevitable con- 
tradiction of the formal system to its formative prin- 
ciple. 

Regarding merely external appearances, it would seem 
that the integration of Christendom had been secured 
by the surrender of Christianity itself. The Church 
would appear to have been dominated by the world. 
The Protestant reformers easily substituted for the scar- 
let woman of the Apocalypse, there indicating the Rome 
of Nero, the papal Rome of their own century. But in 



CHRISTENDOM 3°9 

reality an inestimable service had been rendered to hu- 
manity by the mediaeval Church. Pagan Europe had 
been brought into the Christian fold ; among the com- 
mon people the faith had been accepted in its sim- 
plicity, and, though mingled with superstitious imagin- 
ings, it had nourished and brought into activity the 
sentiments and impulses peculiarly distinctive to a Chris- 
tian life, individual and social. The people were lifted 
into a freer atmosphere and yet remained unsophisti- 
cated, readily moved by generous enthusiasms and hos- 
pitable to the lofty motives of an age which abounded 
in chivalric romance and saintly legend. They inter- 
preted so much of the Gospel as reached them with 
their hearts rather than with their intellects. Theology 
and ritual were the concern of the bishops, and the side 
of these presented to the popular heart was that best 
ministering to its need — impressive, nutritive, and dis- 
ciplinary. Thus was preserved within the hard enclos- 
ure of official ecclesiasticism a genuine spiritual fellow- 
ship • for 'this indeed was the induration of the system 
necessary, as government is necessary for the protection 
of home life and social activities. No system retaining 
the simple plasticity of primitive Christianity could have 
withstood the invasion of Islam ; nor would it have 
sufficed for the building up of Christendom through 
the tutelage and discipline of the swarming Barbarians 
whose rude strength had throttled Roman civilisation. 

The degeneration and corruption which in a natural 
sequence followed this ecclesiastical evolution were but 
the accidents attending the completion of a sacrifice be- 
gun in the fortitude of a necessary but arbitrary sov- 
ereignty; and the forces of the Reformation were nour- 



310 A STUDY OF DEATH 

ished by the fortitude and found their opportunity in 
the weakness and corruption of a structure which had 
done its work in the world. 



XT 

The popular life in the Middle Ages owed to the 
Church its happiest moods, and the natural and sponta- 
neous exaltation of these. The plastic state of child- 
hood was marvellously maintained. Faith 

Accommoda- # J 

tiontothe was creative, the builder of cathedrals, the 
opu ar i e. ma k er f legends ; and, as in the creation of 
the world, it included the grotesque as well as the beau- 
tiful. As the child fondles fear and insists upon the 
dragon element in the fairy-tale, naively clinging to the 
"mark of the beast" in every fanciful representation, 
so the mediaeval Christian imagination, with the divine 
catholicity which saw the original creation to be good — 
though including radical evil and all dark provisions — 
freely mingled old Titanic glooms with new-born hopes, 
cherishing the fiery baptism of purgatorial pains. In 
the creations of art, the ugly and miscreant had their 
place in the triumphant harmony. All things were to- 
gether "bound under hope." As the child expects the 
loving spell that shall show the Beast to be really beau- 
tiful beneath his unshapely masque, so Christian love 
judgeth not, but awaits that vision whose light shall 
eclipse discrimination between the clean and unclean of 
God's creatures, showing what we call ugly really beau- 
tiful after a pattern older than we see in what appears 
to us most comely. 



CHRISTENDOM 311 

Certain indulgences and accommodations of the med- 
iaeval Church to the popular mood, both in the matter 
of belief and practice, seem quite natural from this point 
of view : such, for example, as the tolerance of Mariolatry 
among peoples accustomed to the worship of Isis and 
other female divinities, and the adoption of pagan 
feast-days. The growth of the kingdom was from a 
seed that might be planted in any human heart, just 
where that heart was found, sure to burst its cerements 
and to find its proper nutriment even in the husks of 
an outworn faith — to shed the false and rise the true. 

Nurture itself implies a life diminished and broken 
for the increase and integrity of the nursling, so that 
Christian beliefs have often had in outward form the 
fallibility peculiar to the estate of humanity : not cor- 
rupt or corrupting as received by the fervid believer, 
though if not thus hungrily taken into his organic spir- 
itual life, if regarded as having a use and meaning 
apart from such spiritual assimilation, or if received by 
the mind only as logical formulations, they, like the un- 
consumed manna in the wilderness, disclose their cor- 
ruptibility. The " means of grace " are not objects of 
worship ; it is some descent in them from the heavenly 
height of the principle they embody which brings them 
next the craving of a spiritual hunger, and but for the 
expedition of that satisfaction they suffer vilification. 

It is not a matter of indifference what a man believes, 
or what otherwise may be offered for his spiritual nour- 
ishment. The same food is not suited to all physical 
organisms, or to any one organism at every stage of its 
growth. The kingdom of heaven is within us, and hence 
there is in us its spiritual hunger, which determines its 



312 A STUDY OF DEATH 

own selection ; and because of the marvellous growth 
of this kingdom, there is a development of the hunger 
itself and also of the nurture — the source and principle 
in either case remaining the same, being essential and 
eternal. But the growth is an ascension, and that which 
ministers to it a descension. This is the ministration 
of death unto life. 



XII 

Protestantism, however, was very far from being a 
revival of primitive Christianity. Luther, indeed, re- 
vived Paul's doctrine of Justification by Faith, and 
„ , . with such vehemence that he denounced 

Ecclesias- 
tical Special- the Epistle of James as " an epistle of straw ;" 

but the movement of the Reformation was 
itself so far dominated by State policy that its immedi- 
ate result seemed to be a mere schism rather than the 
great spiritual reaction which radically it really was. 
Wherever this reaction w r as not at first evident it was 
afterward fully developed, as in English Puritanism. 

The dissension itself, like that which originally had 
divided the Western from the Eastern Church, was for 
new integration, and it was attended with violence and 
persecutive hate, such as in the Athanasian Creed had 
consigned to eternal damnation all Christians not as- 
senting to its doctrine — showing that not only the wis- 
dom of the serpent but its venom also entered into the 
ecclesiastical edification, even as the horrors of war 
mark every critical epoch in the progress of civilisation. 
There is no nutritive process, for the building up of any 
structure, that does not involve the production of poison, 



CHRISTENDOM 313 

and still more conspicuously does this malady attend all 
organic functioning. 

Christian fellowship does not, even in its beginning, 
mean the destruction of antipathies, and the divine life 
no more than the human has for its aim security, peace, 
and quietness. That would be to substitute salvation 
for redemption. Ecclesiastical, like all other specialisa- 
tion, is through division. It is as inevitable that the 
visible Church should be broken up into sects as that a 
vast empire should be divided between different races — 
each of these developing a separate nationality. This 
tendency leads, as disciplined intelligence becomes gen- 
eral, to individualism and the emphatic recognition of 
personal liberty and responsibility. 

Our Christian civilisation is fortunate in having 
reached a point, never even approached by any ancient 
civilisation, where we can frankly give up the poet's 
dream of 

"The Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." 

The individual does not wither as the world grows more 
and more. He who in the true sense is most himself 
is most for the world. The profoundest patriotism is 
the truest cosmopolitanism. We can already see that 
the kingdom of heaven cometh not by observation. It 
is no external dynastic bond that can unite nations : 
the outward delimitation promotes the inward bond. It 
is fortunate for both State and Church that the social 
order has entered upon that stage in its progression in 
which each can best perform its functions independent- 
ly of the other, and in such manner as to leave the in- 
dividual, in his proper field, perfectly free, unconscious 



314 A STUDY OF DEATH 

of any outward authority exercised by either ; fortunate 
also for society that it can hope in the near future to 
have the perfectly free play of all its proper activities in 
the development of industry, science, and art. 

This is, indeed, the sum of the advance made by 
Christendom since the Renaissance, which gave to the 
modern world all that was worth having from the old — 
not as a mere heritage, but as something to be crea- 
tively transformed by the Christian spirit. 

In all these lines of advance the kingdom of heaven 
after the Christ type has its specialisation. It is the 
specialisation of humanity — not of a visible Church, of a 
visible State, or of that which we call Society ; least of 
all is it a realisation of St. Augustine's Civitas Dei : all 
these are but the masques of the surely though invisibly 
coming kingdom. Other masques will follow these, the 
same veils indeed, but clarified and made transparent 
in the process of human redemption. The dramatic 
theology of St. Augustine, so alien to the conceptions of 
redemption entertained by Paul and by the Greek Fa- 
thers, with its peculiar doctrine of Grace as confined 
within sacramental limitations, must, like the dramatic 
pomp of ritual, pass into its drastic stage and disappear. 
The meanings of the divine Logos, as manifested in 
Nature and in the Incarnation, will be ultimately as 
they were primarily seen to be for all humanity, and to 
themselves transcend an historical Christ, an Apostolic 
succession, and a limited fellowship. 



CHRISTENDOM 315 



XIII 

It seems strange that at the very stage of progression, 
when this noble prospect is possible, the superficial view 
of our civilisation is made the basis of the profoundest 
pessimism. But it is in this very field of Readv Rea _ 
pessimism that the Christian finds the signs tion of 

,.-.,.. , -w 1 ' • t • • i Modern Life. 

of his brightest hope. In his view the rigid 
worldly mechanism becomes celestial, and materialism 
is seen as solvent to the Spirit of Life. The automatism 
of habit, a facile descent into oblivion, from which life 
and meaning are withdrawn, is seen as a release of life 
for new initiation ; and though in this mortal habit the 
whole world should slip away it would be for fhe resur- 
gence of a new world. Stability itself is kinetic, the re- 
sultant of velocities inconceivably swift. The diabolism, 
which in the old systems of dualism was regarded as in- 
herent in matter, is exorcised. 

The Christian idea of Death, confirmed by every dis- 
closure of science, is itself that of solution, through the 
reaction proper to Life. The Christian idea of a univer- 
sal human fellowship, a recognition of the eternal kin- 
ship, gives to Christendom its scope, broad enough to 
include all reactions in the harmonious interaction of 
all the forces and elements involved. The fundamental 
difference between Paganism and Christendom is that 
the latter, though its systems fail, has within itself the 
secret principle of renascence, so that the Child Jesus is 
forever being born. Owing to the readiness of reaction, 
which increases with the expansion of knowledge among 
all classes of the people, the Order, like a living organ- 



316 A STUDY OF DEATH 

ism, is conserved through its inclusion of death, and 
revolutions are possible without that extreme violence 
which marked those of earlier times. That in the sys- 
tem which falls is doing its work. 

All specialisation is a hiding of Life, whose authority 
in our human progression is thus secluded from the au- 
thority of institutions, retaining its creative potency. At 
every step in advance something is given up which to 
our backward look seems more precious than what we 
have gained. Thus we regret the picturesque mediaeval 
life with its marvellous enthusiasms, its chivalric impulse, 
and romantic heroism, even as many souls in that period 
regretted paganism and longed for the return of Pan. 
Even in the emancipation of our slaves we seem to 
have suffered a loss through the rupture of an intimate 
bond of affection like that which holds together the 
members of a household. 

The gain from these successive revulsions is apparent 
from a wider view. Every emancipation is an entrance 
upon a life involving severer limitations, but the en- 
largement of our perspective and the free play of our 
emotional and intellectual activities depend upon this 
complexity of our finitude. In the discreteness of the 
special accord is its proper excellence and also its cor- 
respondence to the universal harmony. The complete 
perspective would receive the full pulsation of the eter- 
nal life and its full illumination. 

The Hidden Life — our life hidden with Christ in God — 
is our eternal and inalienable heritage. The issues of 
this life in the visible world, in the procession of genera- 
tions, we cannot mentally anticipate, nor are they dis- 
closed in any prophecy. The creative specialisation 



CHRISTENDOM 3 1 7 

will go on, and will surely be completed in redemption. 
Action will still be reaction, antipathy resolved as sym- 
pathy, repulsion as attraction, bondage as freedom, and 
death as swallowed up of life. Evil — all that we have 
called evil from the beginning — will remain, even as 
darkness will alternate with light ; and to whatever ex- 
tent abnormal perversion, inordinate selfishness, and ar- 
bitrary caprice — the accidents of a partially completed 
order — may disappear, life will still have its normal pa- 
thology — its pain and frailty and repentance. 



CHAPTER IV 
ANOTHER WORLD 

What do we or can we know about the thither side 
of Death ? 

There is no sequel to the story of Lazarus, who was 
raised from the dead, disclosing the secrets of that es- 
tate which had been a reality to him for four days, as 
we count time upon the earth. 

The Lord himself, the revealer, in a singular sense, of 
spiritual truth, and especially the illuminator of Death, 
gave, so far as we know, no intimation to his disciples 
of the life beyond the grave. Nor is it recorded that they 
asked for any. Death was unmasqued in the Resurrec- 
tion and was shown as one with creation, but the full 
light of this wonderful illumination was thrown upon 
life here, showing not one definite lineament, not even 
a shadowy trace of the life beyond. There never has 
been any but an imaginative disclosure of that life to 
men living upon the earth. 

A curtain drawn so closely about the present exist- 
ence must have excited the vivid curiosity of the pagan 
mind. We find in ancient literature no trace of this 
curiosity in the shape it takes in recent times, because 
it was so vivid and therefore so immediately took a fixed 
shape in an imagination whose constructions were real 
beyond the shadow of a doubt. There was a develop- 



ANOTHER WORLD 3 J 9 

ment of this imagination from age to age, but at every 
point its creations were regarded as unquestionable real- 
ities, as certain as the objects of present experience. 
To the Egyptian the Book of the Dead was a genuine 
and trustworthy itinerary. What Polygnotus painted 
or Homer described concerning Hades was but a re- 
script of what the Greek already knew with unwavering 
assurance. 

It was only when, in a comparatively recent period, 
men began to question the reality of the immediately 
external world and to impugn the trustworthiness of 
their senses that the "other world" also became un- 
stable and the sport of a mutable fancy. 

When we say that the ancient imaginations of the un- 
seen world were held as certitudes, like the sense-per- 
ceptions of objects in the visible world, it is not there- 
fore to be supposed that these imaginations constituted 
a real knowledge. Indeed, our sense-perceptions do 
not constitute a real knowledge of the external world 
with which we are in contact ; how much less truly 
could imagination render to us the world beyond. The 
belief which men have had in such imaginings is very 
much like our belief in dreams which seem to us real 
even though, in some deeper consciousness, we know 
that we are dreaming. Any disclosure or communica- 
tion must be in the terms of a life that now is; and 
sensibility — whatever illusion it may involve — is at least 
this vital and present contact But men have always 
suspected the masque of the world in their sensibility. 
It is not likely that the more complex disguise of the 
imagination has at any time escaped suspicion. In the 
background of all human thinking, however crude, has 



320 A STUDY OF DEATH 

been this intuition : we know only that which, knowing, 
we do not know that we know. Gnosticism is of the 
eternal. Conscious knowledge is of things in time — 
present, past, and future — things veiled by virtue of 
manifestation. "Another world," considered as a defi- 
nite existence, is the only field for absolute agnosticism, 
wholly cut off from human knowledge through sense, 
intellect, or spiritual apprehension ; it is not veiled but 
absolutely hidden, and of it there is no possible revela- 
tion, save through entrance upon its actualities, when it 
ceases to be " another." We know the divine, the eter- 
nal ; indeed, these alone are really known since life 
itself is essentially these ; but what we call another 
world is not simply invisible, not simply a future or a 
next world in the sense that we think of to-morrow or 
next year ; it is another by an inconceivable diversity — 
a distinct harmonic synthesis, for us unrelated, and un- 
translatable in any terms known to us. The world to 
come we know, since it is that which this world be- 
comes. Another world is a new becoming, having its 
own "world to come;" it is the only incommunicable. 

No divine revelation has ever attempted to broach 
the inviolable secret. Eye hath not seen, ear hath not 
heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to 
conceive. 

There is one utterance by the Lord, recorded in the 
Gospel, concerning the state of the Children of the Res- 
urrection : "They shall not marry, nor be given in 
marriage : neither shall they die any more." It is re- 
markable that, in this declaration, sex and death are 
joined together, as science shows them to be in the 
specialisation of organic life. 



ANOTHER WORLD 321 

The Lord referred to sex and death as we know them, 
in their specialisation. While the essential principle of 
espousal and that of death are eternal, proper to any life 
here or hereafter, it is possible to conceive of a state of 
existence wherein the manifestation of these involves 
none of the external features associated with our knowl- 
edge of them in their earthly manifestation. As there 
are lower organisms which we know to be sexless and 
deathless, in the sense we have of sex and death in 
an advanced specialisation, so there may be higher or- 
ganisms, belonging to that " other world," to which these 
special terms are inapplicable. We say there may be : 
Christ says there are ; and although this assertion is the 
only one made by him directly bearing upon the condi- 
tions of a future life, it is very far-reaching in its sug- 
gestions. 

Even in this earthly human life all desire is spirit- 
ually lifted into its heaven, not as being destroyed, but 
as dying to one environment and being raised into an- 
other, where its manifestation takes higher forms and its 
ministrations seem like those of the angels. It is as if 
out of the earthly matrix of Passion had been born its 
heavenly embodiment, not associated with corruption 
and so seeming something deathless, though it lives 
through the quickness of what Death essentially is in an 
eternal life. It is possible that the Lord's saying had 
its real meaning as applicable to the heavenly exaltation 
of any life, present or future. Certainly the characteristic 
of Christian life is its realisation here of an eternal life, 
through a constant death and resurrection ; and this ex- 
altation belongs to our antipathies as well as to our 
sympathies — to hate and anger as well as to love : these 



3 : 2 A STUDY OF DEATH 

also having their heaven and angelic scope, in a field 
of reconcilement. 

We can see, then, why Christian thought is fixed 
upon a World to Come rather than upon what is called 
Another World. This present life has part in the 
eternal as truly as any life ever can have. 

We pass from glory to glory, and that crisis which we 
call death is only a transition from one harmony to an- 
other. In certain forms of the Polish national dances, 
the guests move from room to room in the palace, the 
music and the movement ever changing in the proces- 
sional march, according to the progressive phases of the 
theme enacted. From beginning to end it is the same 
theme, and the guests are the same. So it may be in 
the progression of our human life from one mansion to 
another of the Fathers House ; there is a mystic change, 
not of personalities but of special individual guises, in- 
volving complete divestiture, the theme enacted remain- 
ing the same. 

It is because of the complete divestiture that entire 
newness is possible. Our attention is so fixed upon 
structure and upon changes as themselves structural 
that we seem at a loss when the entire structure disap- 
pears from our view. But how does a structure begin ? 
Is not birth as much a as death ? Form is of 

the essence ; and, in a sense not to be expressed in 
language, the personality has eternal form. 

Eternal form shall still divide 
The eternal soul from all beside." 

In the same sense, familiarity in time has its sround 



ANOTHER WORLD 323 

in the eternal familiarity, whereby alone we know and 
are known. Our cognition here" is re-cognition. 

The formed memory and the formed character may be 
destroyed ; but the life withdrawn from these, their es- 
sential ground, has its spiritual embodiment after its 
distinct type, still remembering and re-cognisant. The 
" deeds done in the body " are not, but the doer is, and 
according to those deeds : in essential form accordant, 
whatever the new environment. The child seems an 
entirely new creature, but, whatever science may deter- 
mine as to his inheritance of characteristics acquired 
in preceding generations, he is surely and wholly an 
heir in that he can himself acquire anything — an heir, 
not simply because of and in relation to an outward 
heritage, but because of what he is. There is in this 
continuity an inscrutable mystery : that which deter- 
mines the accord in the series is invisible. It is the 
mystery of Genesis itself. The continuity phenome- 
nally is through discontinuity; death is essential in 
birth as in growth. Now, let the break — that interval 
in the harmony which we call death — be, to all appear- 
ance, absolute ; then the resurgence, beyond our vision, 
is in the very field of creation ; passing out of the 
known series, out of the succession of what we know 
as in Time, it is the property of life as eternal, the heri- 
tage of the eternal kinship, wider a new limitation. 

What is the continuity from the limitation known to 
us to that new and wholly unimaginable limitation? 
The mystery is transferred from the visible to an invis- 
ible death, which is one with the invisible birth. But 
the new birth — what is its matrix ? 

Suppose we were permitted to resume a position at 



324 A STUDY OF DEATH 

a point in time before the appearance of organic life 
upon the earth. Would any then existing form of in- 
organic life help us to an imagination of physiological 
embodiment ? Science confesses its inability to answer 
the question. What was the matrix of cell-life ? 

An equally insoluble mystery is presented, if we in- 
quire what is the matrix of any form, or how the con- 
tinuity of either a generic or an individual type of 
organic life is maintained in all permutations of environ- 
ment. It is a mystery belonging to creation, incom- 
municable, itself the ground of communication. No 
considerations derived from what we know of the con- 
stitution of matter or of material structures, and none 
derived from mental categories, explain the transforma- 
tions of the visible world: how much less can they be 
expected to even suggest the forms and limitations of 
an order of existence not yet creatively communicated ! 

Because we, in our present existence, have no con- 
scious knowledge of pre-existent states, it does not fol- 
low that the future life will be wholly denied such 
knowledge. Our conscious intelligence here is a dis- 
tinctive characteristic of the ultimate order in the 
known series ; and in man this intelligence involves 
peculiar powers of reflection, co-ordination, and inter- 
pretation, so that the psychical as well as the physical 
man surmounts the entire series resumed in him. In 
a new order it may be a characteristic of the creative 
communication that conscious intelligence shall be a 
clearer resumption, involving at least the conscious 
recognition of friends and kindred. Our cognition 
here of anything is unconsciously re-cognition, a seeing 
as through a glass darkly, a mere adumbration of a 



ANOTHER WORLD 325 

recognition hereafter which shall be a seeing face to 
face. Illusions there may be — the face itself is a veil 
— but there may be a more transparent mediation in 
the communication, undisturbed by the obscurations 
and refractions such as limit our present mental vision. 
We speak of what may be ; every presumption of a 
revelation which is itself a transcendent creative com- 
munication gives assurance instead of mere hypoth- 
esis. 

To our reason this subject is beset with difficulties, 
because we become entangled in dilemmas suggested 
by present relations, such as imprisoned the minds of 
the Sadducees in the problem they presented to Christ. 

Because the new assumption or embodiment is not 
of flesh and blood, as we know them, it is not necessary 
to suppose that it is immaterial. To it a new sensibil- 
ity and a new thought would involve space and time as 
forms to which our corresponding terms for these would 
be merely analogues. 

Given us a new sensibility, there would be given us a 
new universe. We say the dead have passed away from 
us, but it is perfectly reasonable to conceive of them as 
nearer to us than ever, in a closer intimacy than any 
known to us. 

During the century now closing man has made an 
important advance through dealing with subtle cosmic 
forces which had hitherto been known only as dealing 
with him, and, even thus, scarcely appreciated. Elec- 
trical phenomena had been observed in sparks occa- 
sioned by friction and in the lightning, and the magnetic 
current had been utilised in the compass ; but the terms 
electricity and magnetism had but a glint of the mean- 



326 A STUDY OF DEATH 

ing now attached to them. We do not yet know what 
these invisible currents are, but we have made our- 
selves at home with them, and comprehend what for- 
merly was not suspected — their intimacies with all cos- 
mic operation and with our animate economies. For 
the obvious terrestrial forces, manifest in weight and 
pressure and elasticity, we are now rapidly substituting 
these finer tensions, thus driving the horses of the sun 
without risking the fate of Icarus. It is as if our solar 
heritage had been restored to us. Through this widened 
familiarity in a field which until so recent a period was 
wholly hidden from us, we have reached a new and 
etherealised conception of matter, and have come to 
feel the pulse of a living universe. Science is redeem- 
ing matter, making its veils transparent. 

In this new view it is not difficult for us to conceive of 
spiritual intimacies more subtle and pervasive than any 
which science has disclosed in the material world, 
though these cannot be apparent to us in a definitely 
conscious appreciation. 

If on the same wire, through electrical vibrations in 
musical accord, several distinct messages may be simul- 
taneously conveyed, why may not all that we call matter 
be at the same time the medium for the expression of 
distinct orders of intelligences? 

All reasoning proceeds through analogy, but we must 
be on our guard against the fallacy involved in the proc- 
ess. The truth in physics or chemistry can become a 
biological truth only by such transformation as is in- 
volved in the inorganic world becoming the organic. 
Any conception of our present conditions carried for- 
ward into our imagination of those pertinent to a future 



ANOTHER WORLD 327 

life must undergo an inconceivable and, to us here, im- 
possible transformation. 

What we know as good and evil, life and death, is 
but the analogue to these as we shall know them in an- 
other harmony. It is sufficient for us that in the Christ- 
life Death and Evil are unmasqued for us and reconciled 
with the Eternal Life. Our faith is in the Resurrection 
through the power of this eternal life : in what form we 
know not, but we know in what similitude — in the like- 
ness of the Son of God. 

For the lifting and illumination of our life here is the 
great disclosure made. Our Lord's resurrection brought 
him back to us, as if born to us a second time, showing 
us the nativity of a spiritual body. His new words to 
his disciples, instead of intimating the joys and pains 
of another world, dwelt upon the sufferings of the son 
of man before he could enter into his glory. So does 
our faith comprehend our travail and sorrow, finding in 
these the true way of life and that there is no other 
way. Christian philosophy, like science, finds in that 
which is the ground of heaviness the charm of levitation, 
the attraction which binds together a universe. 



INDEX 



Abraham, 261-3, 

Abstraction, 42. 

Accords : Desire, in the line of special, 
144 ; true to the original key, what- 
ever dissonance in the procession, 
157; discrete, sustained, 185; diver- 
sification of, in the organic harmony, 
193 ; special for each new form of 
existence, 205, 316. 

Achilles, in Hades, 44; among the 
maidens, a type of juvenescence, 210. 

Age, wakefulness of, 19, 218. 

Alternativity, 13-16. 

Altruism, illustrated in all cosmic de- 
velopment, 112; in every economy 
of animal and social life, 159 ; excess 
of, in human relations, 172; Chris- 
tianity substitutes identification for, 
284. 

Ancestor worship, 29. 

Animal life, ascension of, 115. 

Annihilation, virtue of, 46. 

Another world, 318-27. 

Antipathy becomes sympathy, from 
which it springs, 159. 

Antitheses of the Gospel, 301-2. 

Apollo, 37. 

Appearance disguises Reality, 88, 140, 

319- 

Arbitrary, the, in human conduct, 136, 
140. 

Art, beginning of representative, 43. 

Ascent of Life, 183. 

Association from dissociation, 126, 150, 
158. 

Athene Parthenos, the type of outward 
completeness, 152. 

Atoms, 186. 

Attraction and repulsion, comple- 
mentary, 144, 158, 236, 289. 

Augustine, his mission, 307-9, 313. 



Authority, genetic, 142; associated 
with growth, 253 ; grounded in falli- 
bility, 295. 

Aversion, first manifestation of De- 
sire, 205. 

Baptism, a burial with Christ, 280. 
Barrenness, for life, 188, 287; Hebrew 

stress upon, 226. 
Becoming involves fitness, 136. 
Birth, a flight, 69 ; lies next to Death, 

73, 184; a break with the Eternal, 

143 ; a mystery as profound as death, 

322. 
Blood in Hebrew symbolism, 253. 
Bridegroom, the, 40, 54, 164, 286-9, 

2 94-5 > 300- 
Brotherhood, universal, 51, 62. 
Buddhism, nihilistic, 303. 

Cell, gospel of the, 102. 

Chance, divine, 156. 

Chemical adumbration of physiology, 
107. 

Childhood, familiarity of, with the in- 
visible, 18; rapid investiture of, in 
modern life, 30 ; plasticity of, 203 ; 
pains of, 204 ; exaltation of, a with- 
drawal from the world and an imper- 
ative absorption, 208 ; hauteur of, 
20S ; tension and storage of, 213; 
maintained into maturity, 218; un- 
moral, 236, 270 ; type of the kingdom 
of heaven, 237-243 ; in the Christ- 
life, 238 ; in the Hebrew, 240 ; in 
primitive Christianity, 304-5 ; in 
Christian peoples of the Middle 
Ages, 310. 

Choice, 127, 135, 140, 152. 

Christ, one with Nature, 54; became 
Sin and glorified Death, 233 ; falling 



33° 



INDEX 



of, 234 ; attitude toward, of Jew and 
Gentile, 258 ; the universal hope, 
260 ; ever the Lord to come, 261 ; 
opened heaven, 267-8 ; ascension of, 
269 ; the sun of the spiritual world, 
272 ; stands and falls for humanity, 
266, 272, 294 ; his resurrection the 
transcendent nativity, 273 ; Bride- 
groom of humanity, 289 ; no part of 
his mission to abolish evil, 290; not 
to be wholly imitated, 296 ; as a 
Prophet, 300. 

Christendom, 286-317. 

Christian Philosophy and Science, 
81. 

Christianity, gave death back to Life, 
62 ; fully confronted Death, 274, 
279; its pilgrimage not away from, 
but through the City of Destruction, 
275; a catholic fellowship, 280; con- 
verted altruism into identification, 
284 ; accommodation of, to Pagan- 
ism, 285 -, in its worldly develop- 
ment contradicts the Sermon on the 
Mount, 295; its summer and win- 
ter, 299 ; extension of, before or- 
ganisation, 304 ; organisation of the 
early, 306 ; in the time of Constan- 
tine, 307 ; mediaeval, 307, 309 ; dis- 
sension of, for integration, 312. 

Church, the mediaeval, 307-8. 

Civil economy, as natural as domestic, 
160. 

Clairvoyance, of primitive sensibility, 
34 ; of blind feeling, 84. 

Comedy, the human, 125. 

Commandment for life, 169. 

Communication, 140. 

Communism of Christians at Jerusa- 
lem, 305. 

Competition, in. 

Completeness, outward, 43, 152, 176, 
181, 297. 

Conjugal relation between man and 
the Lord, 289. 

Conscience, plastic to vital determi- 
nation, 168 ; the Hebrew, 270. 

Consciousness, 68, 125. 

Constantine, 307. 

Consubstantiation, 41, 68, 287. 

Contradiction of system to principle, 
52, 127, 164, 166, 177, 182, 286-8, 296, 
308. 



Conventional institutions not artifi- 
cial, 155, 170. 

Copernican astronomy restored the 
earth to its heavenly station, 282. 

Creation imageless, 65 ; hidden in 
specialisation, 73-5, 83, 84 ; continu- 
ous, 90 ; confessed in its denial, 142 ; 
emphasised in Hebrew faith, 252 ; 
Paul's idea of a new, 277, 283 ; in 
grace, 289 ; redemptive, 294. 

Creative communication, 325. 

Creative specialisation instead of spe- 
cial creations, 81. 

Critical points, 86, 109, 211. 

Crystallisation a florescence, 109. 

Darkness, Powers of, first regarded 
as friendly, 37. 

De Quincey, 31. 

Dead, the, mightier than the living, 
39; plant-life associated with the, 
29. 

Death, before Eden, 3 ; the body of, 
9-12 ; and sleep, 10, 17-21 ; seclusion 
and introspection of, 11; the soul's 
confessional, 11 ; the invisible Angel 
of Life, 13, 275 ; no movement of life 
begun or completed save through, 
13 ; a mystery escaping observation, 
14; a reaction proper to life, 14; 
essential, an absolution, 17; gravita- 
tion the physical symbol of, 22 ; 
Janus-faced, looking to palingenesis 
and to resurgence of new life upon 
the earth, 24 ; mystery of, bound up 
with that of evil, 25 ; primitive 
thought of, 29 ; denial of, in human 
progress, 45 ; the power of resur- 
gence, 45 ; a wrestler, inviting con- 
flict, 46 ; for renewal, 54 ; universal- 
ity of, 56; inseparable from Love 
and Grief, 56 ; in the Sacred Myste- 
ries of Paganism, 60 ; in creation, 65 ; 
the winged Israfil, 66; genetic, not 
to be found in the old and dead, 66 ; 
lies next to birth, 73, 184; solvency 
of, 82 ; in completing a cycle, always 
a transformation, 88 ; of the inor- 
ganic for ascent of organisms, 99 ; as 
specialised, enters the world with 
Love, 102, 321; conspicuous in or- 
ganic life, 109 ; invisibly is Love, 
and visibly is born of Love, 109 ; 



INDEX 



33* 



Nature runs toward, and accumu- 
lates in her progression, 112, 154; 
ministrant to psychical development, 
123, iSS; conflict with, in the moral 
order, 134; genetic, 142; develop- 
ment from conflict with, 148; the 
shadow of a brightness, 154 ; con- 
fesses Life, 177 ; included in as- 
cent of life, 178, 281 ; in reproduc- 
tion, 184 ; organic capacity for, 187 ; 
expressed in the terms of life, 189, 
191 ; in functioning, florescence, and 
fruition, 189, 288; a prop, 190; an 
inspiration, 196 ; obscuration of, in 
maturity, 215; unmasqued, 223; 
illustrated and glorified by Christ, 
233 ; Pauline interpretation of, 274- 
317 ; in spiritual nurture, 311 : 
thither side of, what do we know of ? 
318-27. 

Decline, 218-20; disarray of, 320. 

Deeds, impotency of, 2S4 ; "done in 
the body," 323. 

Defect, radical, 200. 

Degeneration, 112. 

Demeter, 36. 

Design, 81, 167, 256. 

Desire, earthward, 36 ; finding its 
Way, 40 ; shaping power of, 40 , 
importunity of, 76 ; follows accord, 
144 ; begins in aversion, 204-5. 

Dissociation, seems primary, 126 ; be- 
comes association, 126, 159. 

Dissolving view, spiritual suggestion 
of, 68. 

Distance, illusion of, 72 ; value of, 124, 
185,198,288. 

Disturbance, a stimulation, 130; the 
beginning of motion, 293. 

Divestiture, 229 ; in life of the Hebrew 
and of Christ, 229, 238-46, 298. 

Divided Living, the, 66-132. 

Divination, 39, 156. 

Divinisation at death, 39. 

Dove, the, and the serpent, 3-5, 
303- 

Dreams, 19, 20, 41. 

Dualism, Manichasan, 53, 179. 

Duty, 146. 

Earth, nearness of, to the primitive 
man, 36 ; the Great Mother, 36 ; the 
prodigal planet, 70 ; Copernican re- 



demption of, 282 ; bride of the Sun, 
286-8 ; glory of life on the, 292. 

Ebionites, sterile asceticism of, 25S. 

Election the principle of integration, 
285. 

Elohim, the dead and angels so called, 
43 •_ 
; Elysium, 37. 

Espousals, 286-9. 

Eternal in Time, 178-S0, 2S0. 

Ether, vortical motions of, 186. 

Eumenides, 31, 32, 44. 
j Evil, inseparable from Good, 5 ; mys- 
tery of, bound up with that of Death, 
25 ; attempt to exclude, in moral 
1 ideals, 61, 9S ; not merely disci- 
plinary, 178; begins with life, 206 ; 
unmasqued by Christ, 231-2; inclu- 
sion of, in the Christ life, 235, 266; 
Pauline interpretation of, 274-285 ; 
not abolished by Christ, 290 ; not 
for the sake of Good, 292 ; the other 
name of Good, 293 ; included in the 
kingdom of heaven, 295 -, lifted into 
its heaven, 321 ; like Good, and 
Death, as known here, merely ana- 
logues of what they will be in another 
world, 327. 

Evolution, 81, 94, no. 

Evolution and Involution, 83, in, 143, 
155, 186. 

Expectancy in creative transformation, 
87 ; in man, 87. 

Experience, limitations of, 127 ; pecul- 
iar aspects of human, 135-7; not di- 
vorced from vital destination, 140; 
fruits in the garden of, 151 ; not de- 
pendent on arbitrary selection, 167. 

Explosiveness of precipitation at crit- 
ical points, 211. 

Fall of Man, 120, 148. 

Fallibility, of the regenerate, 295 ; 
necessary to progress, 295. 

Familiarity, the eternal, 43, 67, 
323- 

Family, the, 144, 160, 175-6. 

Fatness in Hebrew symbolism, 253. 

Fear, as natural as hope, 38; origin 
of religion attributed to, 150 ; de- 
velops cunning, 150; rather an in- 
ward boldness, shown outwardly as 
shyness, 154. 



33? 



INDEX 



Feeling, blind, specialisation of, 85, 
131- 

Fiske. John, 94, 216. 

Flesh and Spirit. 116, 254 

Formed Life, mortal, 177, 323. 

Fortitude becomes sacrifice. 175, - : 

Free-will, 133, 140. 

Functioning, a dyini 

Future State, primitive idea of, 35, 37, 
61 ; we have no definite conception 
of, 318; ancient imaginations of, 
318-19; continuity of, from present, 
324. 

Genetic Quality of Life, 67, 68, 105, 

133. 141, 143, 157, 167. 

Gentile embodiment of Christ, 259-60. 

Germ plasma, pliysiological dominion 
of, 142. 

God, the Prophet's vision of, as of one 
who has passed by, 16: the Most 
Low to the primitive thought. 38: 
the first materialist, 76 ; responsible 
for His universe, 77 ; the hiding of, 
83, 125: always in His world, and 
always creative. 00: "hath so set 
the world in the heart of man,'' 127 : 
has not experience, 136; portion of 
even* creature, 144 : when we touch 
chance, we broach, 156, good plea- 
sure of, in humanity. : • : 

Golden age, 14 ; . 153. 

Good, repented of, 98 : our idea of, as 
partial as our idea of Evil, 293. 

Government, weakness of, requires 
special fortification, 151 ; is natural, 
::' :. 

Grace and works, in Paul's interpre- 
tation, 277, 279, 284. 

Gravitation, physical symbol of Death, 
22, 190: included in ascent, 23. 25, 95. 

Growth, genetic transformation, 105. 

Habit, 113, 149; automatism of, a 
release, 315. 

Hades, 39, 43, 268; primitive idea o£ 
as the ground of germinant life, 29, 
32 ; Pluto, the god of wealth. 30. 

Harmon v, distributed in order, 155, 
198. 

Heaven, 267-9. 

Hebrew: the broken man, 225 : singu- 
lar destiny of , 226: had no outwardly 



completed art, science, or polity, 227, 
242 ; his inward wholeness, 227 : re- 
pellent sacred flame of his destiny, 
228; distinguished from other Se- 
mitic races, 242 : his prolonged pa- 
triarchate, 243, 265 ; his marvellous 
assimilation. 243 ; his culture of Em- 
manuel, 245, 265 ; held with diffi- 
culty to his destiny, 245 : his faith 
as distinguished from the pagan, 
246 ; prophetic compulsion of, 247 ; 
his thought of God, 248 ; anthropo- 
morphism of, 252 ; symbolism touch- 
ing incarnation, 253-4; bis singular 
destiny not supernatural 256 ; atti- 
tude toward Jesus. 258 ; type set in 
the patriarchal, shepherd, and tent 
life, 262-6 ; movement consummated 
in Christ, 270 : his idea of Sin as con- 
nected with that of kinship, 270-1 ; 
the issue of his destiny, 271-3. 

Hebrew Scripture, 32, 241. 

Heracles, 36, 209. 288. 

Heraclitus, 221. 

Hiding of God, 83, 125; of life, 84, 
i37» 316. 

Homely sense of things, 67, 72, 80, 86, 
96, 142-3, 174. 

Homer, his representation of Hades, 
44,319- 

Hospitality, 15S. 

Humanity a disguised Divinity, 29, 
4i- 

Hunger, selective wisdom of, 40, 3 1 1- 
12; perils of, 300. 

Illusions, of appearance, 52 : of sci- 
ence, 113 : of arbitrary freedom, 127, 
142 : the veils of transformation- 
scenes, 129 ; of experience in a moral 
order, 161-4; as mental inversions, 
194. 

Imitation of Christ, must avoid exact 
similitude, 296. 

Incarnation, physiological intimations 
of, 103-4 ; the eternal Word becom- 
ing, 104; the cosmic expectancy of, 
114: the central idea in Hebrew 
symbolism, 253-5. 

Individualism and free play of all ac- 
tivities developed in Christendom, 

313. 
Induration, 77, 173. 



INDEX 



333 



Inertia, 186, 190; in nutrition and res- 
piration, 282. 

Infancy, miracle of, 202. 

Inhibition in nature, 133, 141, 170. 

Inorganic life, living and sentient, 57, 
91, 93 ; ascents of, hidden from us, 
99 ; why we call it dead, 99 ; descent 
and diminution of, for the ascent of 
organisms, ioo, 106. 

Instinct, hidden beneath rational pro- 
cesses, 59, 127 ; conscious intelli- 
gence from interruption of, 158. 

Involution, 83, in, 143, 155, 186, 191, 
198, 208. 

James's Epistle, ethics of, 305. 
Jew, the Wandering, 233. 
Justice, 61, 150, 161, 170-1, 251. 
Juvenescence, includes death, 23 ; 
sleep characteristic of, 19, 218. 

Kepler, belief of, in an animate and 
sentient universe, 57. 

Kinship, primitive, 35, 49 ; first de- 
rived from motherhood, 36 ; first 
seen as dissociative, 58 ; primitive 
thought of; as including the universe, 
57 ; genetic, involved in creation, 
67; the eternal, 141-2, 206, the par- 
ticular, determined by the universal, 
144, 159 , lays no stress upon justice, 
161 ; the beginning and end of the 
moral order, 180; revelation of. bv 
Christ, 235 , Hebrew idea of, 252-3, 
255, 261, 276; Paul's view of, 277; 
bondage the bond of, 278, 283 ; re- 
alised in Christian fellowship, 282. 

Lethe and Levana, 39, 130, 137. 

Liberty, 127. 

Life' transcends embodiment, 17; 
holds the secret of its ruin, 24; the 
fiontifex maximus, 82 ; hiding of, 
84, 137, 316; quality of, the same, 
whatever the situation, 88; higher 
and lower, 97; seeks difficulty, 
in; determines environment, 114; 
155, 212 ; spontaneous disposition 
of, 133 ; in its spontaneity unmoral, 
141 ; not an endowment, 146, 195 ; 
does not follow a logical plan, 155, 
167, 172; one with destiny, 156; 
originally consents to what in the 



phenomenal strife it antagonises, 
156 ; outwardly a dying, 189 ; deter- 
mines its own limit, 192 ; begins in 
disturbance, 204 ; outward quicken- 

, ing of, 210; momentum of, 212; 
beneficence of its ruins, 2 14 ; must 
be accepted on its own flaming 
terms, 236. 

Light, the first veil hiding God, 83. 

Limit : a bound and a bond, 68 ; more 
complex in advanced specialisation, 
124; in human experience, 130; 
merciful, 173. 2S6; of capacity, dis- 
closing reaction. 186; determined by 
the reaction proper to Life, 191-92, 
206 ; ab initio^ 195 ; the bond of re- 
turn, 236; the sign of emancipation, 
316; the Resurrection involves new 
form of, 323. 

Loss, for gain, 199; the first word of 
the kingdom, 240. 

Lucifer, Light-bearer, must rise again, 
293- 

Luther, 312. 

Maeterlinck, 31. 

Mahometanism, the modern Ishmael, 
303 ; the opposite extreme of Nihi- 
listic Buddhism, 303. 

Malady, normal, 205. 

Man : primitive, 33 ,• brotherhood of, 
51 , development of, corresponds to 
that of the cosmos, 75-6 ; distinctive 
in his specialisation, 117 ; his reca- 
pitulation of antecedent forms, 118, 
193,' fall of, 120, 148; his insignifi- 
cance as a mere animal, 121 ; Ins 
singular psychic destiny, 121 • plan- 
etary and solar, 126 ; fallibility of, 
130; lost in the Prodigal's "far 
country/' 130,- superficial retrospect 
of his progress, 147-53 ; a closer 
view of, I53-6S," not a fragment of 
the world, 179; one with the Eter- 
nal, 180; his restoration, 283; re- 
covers his solar heritage, 326. 

Manichasism, 53. 

Materialism, divine pattern of, 76. 

Matter, living and non - living, 57 ; 
why we call it dead, 99 ; solvency of, 
114, 181, 326; is not acted upon by 
other matter, 145 ; idea of it as refrac- 
tory, 152 ; diabolism of, 315 ; may be 



334 



INDEX 



the medium. of the simultaneous ex- 
pression of distinct orders of intelli- 
gences, 326. 

Maturity, 214. 

Mechanism, 15, 67, 139, 179, 190. 

Merit, 146, 151, 169. 

Metabolism, 144, 184. 

Middle Ages, popular life in, 310. 

Mineral kingdom foreshadows phys- 
iological processes, 91. 

Molecular imitation of the molar, 
107. 

Momentum, 212. 

Moral Order, 133-182 ; begins in spon- 
taneous disposition, 133 ; tendency 
of, to inflexible rule, 134 ; resists dis- 
integration, 134; superficial view 
of, emphasises arbitrary selection; 
134-9 ; duty in the, 146 ; kinship 
modified by, 147 ; superficial view of 
human experience in the, 147-153 ; 
a closer view, 153-168; does not 
derive its sanction from religion, 161 ; 
begins and ends in kinship, 180 ; 
grounded in a spiritual principle, 
181. 

Mortal habit, the, 130, 176, 190, 191, 
196, 207, 2S8. 

Mosaic Law, the, tenderness of, 249; 
in its origin a fatherly command- 
ment, 278 ; leading to Christ, 279, 

Mother, the Great, 36. 

Motion in lines oi least resistance, 
true in evolution but not in involu- 
tion, in. 

Mysticism, native, 33 ; mediaeval and 
modern, 49; meaning of the term, 
52 ; the ultimate, 54 ; nihilism of, a 
sterile simplicity, 286. 

Native impressions, 29-62 ; not found 
in degenerate races called "savage," 
32 ; survive in some passages of 
Hebrew Scripture, 32. 

Native Races, characteristics of, 155. 

Nature, meaning of the term, 17, one 
with the Lord, 54 ; her apparently 
closed circles, 90 ; apparent hostility 
to man, 14S; inhibition in, 133, 141, 
170. 

Newton's mystical apprehension of 
gravitation as an attraction, 22. 

Nirwana, 49. 



Nothing, creative void, 65 ; vanishing 
side of life, 192. 

Nutrition, 105-6 ; a conversion of the 
altruism of reproduction into identi- 
fication, 159; fruition from check of, 
109 ; spiritual, a descent and broken- 
ness, 311. 

Odysseus in Hades, 44. 

Olympian divinities outside the pale of 
human sympathy, 57, 120. 

Organic Life ; adumbration of the 
Christ-life, 90, 102-3 ; preparation 
for, 92, 184-5 5 a physiological plan- 
etary system, 100; fully expressed 
in incarnation, 103-4; reflecting 
Godward, 103, 200 ; reveals creation, 
105 ; reversion of the inorganic, 106 ; 
suggestions derived from, contra- 
dicting scientific dicta, 109-14; 
earth as modified by, 12 1-3 ; rises 
out of a barren world, 186 ; its 
especial inclusion of death, 187. 

Organisms, lower, have a kind of im- 
mortality and marvellous potency, 



Paganism, disintegrated by civilisa- 
tion, 60 ; confined to Nature's closed 
circles, 61; weakness of, 61, 297; 
distinguished from Christendom, 62; 
distinguished from Hebraism, 246. 

Paradise, 37, 267. 

Paradox, 35, 199. 

Partners, our Cosmic, 196. 

Pathology, normal and universal, 58, 
214; so recognised by Christianity, 
62 ; especially associated with be- 
ginnings, 205. 

Paul, his interpretation of Death and 
Evil, 274-285 ; his view of bondage 
and redemption as universal, 278; 
his idea of Grace and of Works of 
the Law, 278, his doctrine of elec- 
tion, 285. 

Persephone, 31, 36. 

Personality, mystery of, 21, 145; form 
of, eternal, 322. 

Perspective, gain of, in specialisation, 
84. 

Pessimism, 134; field of, that of the 
largest hope, 315. 

Pharisees, sect of, began in the loftiest 



INDEX 



335 



spiritual ideal, 227 ; early adherents 

to Christianity, 260. 
Philo Judaeus, 53. 

Physiology foreshadowed in chemis- 
try, 107-S. 
Plato, 221 ; his " Ideas," 185. 
Pluto, 30, 31. 
Poe, 31. 

Polygnotus, 319. 
Pomegranate, many - seeded, pledge 

between Persephone and Pluto, 31 ; 

held in one hand by the Eumenides, 

32- 
Prejudice more vital than logic, 172. 
Primitive man, 29, 33, 56. 
Probation, 37, 178. 
Prodigal Sons, a Cosmic Parable, 

63-182. 
Prometheus, 61. 
Prophets, Hebrew, 247 ; primitive 

habit of, reversed by Christ, 300. 
Protestantism, 308, 312. 
Protoplasm, wonderful potency of, 187. 

Quickness, the invisible and the vis- 
ible, 211 ; of Death, 2S1. 

Reaction", tropic, 13-16, 35, 85 ; dis- 
closed at limit of tension, 186 ; is in 
the action, 86 ; in conservatism, 178 ; 
gives limit and dominates expres- 
sion, 191 ; of childhood, 209 ; readi- 
ness of, in modern Christendom, 315. 

Recapitulation in man of antecedent 
forms, 118, 193, 202. 

Recognition, 40, 128 ; in another world, 
3 2 4- 

Rectitude, 61. 

Redemption, creative, 53, 294 

Religion not a necessary sanction to 
morality, 16 r. 

Repentance in natural and human 
transformations, 53, 231, 251. 

Reproduction, in the lower organisms, 
101 ; beginning of death, 1S4, 207. 

Repulsion, seems primary, 205 ; begins 
and ends in attraction, 236. 

Resistance becomes assistance, 130. 

Responsibility, human and divine, 77, 
148, 249. 

Resurrection, 82, 255, 269, 272, 273, 
277. 279-S0, 291, 318, 327* 

Revelation, a transcendent creative 



communication, 325; kinship the 
basis of, 41, 264. 
Roman Empire, 151; family life in, 
160, expansion of early Christianity 
in, 304- 

Safety not an objective aim in Nat- 
ure, 112. 

Samson's Riddle, 17. 

Schopenhauer: " the will not to live," 
303- 

Science postulates an invisible world, 
15 ; mysticism of, 23-4; ignores the 
creative principle, 73 ; its possible 
Christian philosophy, Si ; deals with 
quantitative relations, 95, no; certi- 
tudes of, denied by creative life, 
109-14. 

Seed, liberation of, by Death, 31. 

Selection, no absolutely arbitrary, 
140. 

Selfhood, 50, 128. 

Sensibility begins in pain, 38, 154, 
204-5. 

Separation, if vital, the breaking .of a 
union, which still remains one, in- 
cluding the fragment, 145. 

Sequestration, mercy of, 174, 193, 199, 

Serpent, and the dove, 3-5 ; sign of the 
underworld divinities, 30. 

Sex, specialisation of, 102 , and Death, 
102, 321 ; divulsion for union, 288. 

Shaler, X. S., 87, 91, 211. 

Sheol, 37, 43, 267. 

Sin, reconciliation of, with the eternal 
life, 25, 182; Hebrew idea of, 270; 
Paul's interpretation of, 278. 

Singularity, 225. 

Sleep, and Death, 10, 17-21; a charac- 
teristic of juvenescence, 19, 218 ; 
education of, 39. 

Social evolution like the cosmic, 155. 

Solar system, repeats the parable of 
the Prodigal Son, 70. 

Solitude, dehumanising, 50. 

Son and the Father, 67, 182. 

Specialisation, 69, 73, 75, -j-j, 80, 185, 
195 ; creative, 81, 92, 94 ; of Death 
and Sex concurrent, 102 ; a hiding of 
life, 316. 

Specific forces, 185. 

Spencer, Herbert, 86, no. 

Spirit, Hebrew idea of, 254. 



33& 



INDEX 



Spiritual life not divorced front Nat- 
ure, 55. 

Spontaneity, 133, 169. 

Stability, tendency toward, 78 ; an illu- 
sion, 112, 164, 177 ; is kinetic, 315. 

Structure, strength of, gained at ex- 
pense of life, 134, 147, 163, 177. 

Sun, worship of, 36; witness of the, 
92 ; a martyr, 99. 

Superstition, original exaltation of, 34. 

Surprise, 86-7. 

Survival, Nature seeks revival rather 
than, 112. 

Suspense, 77, 124, 141, 184, 216 

System, contradicts its principle, 52, 
67, 70-1, 127, 164, 166, 177J i82j 286- 
8, 296, 308. 

Swedenborg, 102. 

Thompson, J. Arthur, 122. 
Time, emphasis of, 79, 138, 178. 
Titans, 37. 

Transformations, genetic, creative, 68. 
Tropic movement, 13-16, 35, 85^ 143, 
167, 178, 186, 199, 252. 



Uniformity, disguising transforma- 
tion, 88. 

Unity, a sterile conception, 85. 

Universe, living and sentient, 57, 91, 
93- 

Veiling of Life, 83, 84, 96, 198, 316. 
Vital and chemical processes, 23, 186. 

Water, associated with death and 
birth, 44 ; transformations of adum- 
brating physiological processes, 
107-8. 

Wave lengths of forces, 186. 

Way, the, 40. 

World to come, not a better, accord- 
ing to moral preference* but a new, 
98 ; of nature, 100 ; distinguished 
from " another world," 320, 322. 

Youth and age, 204. 

Zero, the sign of infinity, 47. 
Zodiac, signs of, applicable to every 
cycle of life, 209. 



THE END 



GOD IN HIS WORLD 

An Interpretation. By Henry Mills Alden. 
Book I. From the Beginning. Book II. The 
Incarnation. Book III. The Divine-Human 
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